


Return of the Scathing Moon

by Fai_Gensou



Category: Bleach
Genre: Aizen has no ethics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And decides to come clean, Culture Shock, Gen, Isshin gets his powers back earlier, Warning Feels, as displayed by Hollow Ichigo, plus whip Ichigo into shape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2020-07-31 09:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fai_Gensou/pseuds/Fai_Gensou
Summary: Just how much of a difference would it have made, if Isshin had recovered his powers earlier? How much of a difference would there be, with someone actively teaching Ichigo, beyond seat-of-his-pants training? Isshin may be a terrible parent, but he'll do his damnest to make sure Ichigo is ready for the challenges waiting him.Rewrite of the version originally posted on FanFiction.net





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own Bleach.

Isshin wasn’t _really_ lying about not seeing ghosts.

Not when all he saw was hazy blurs.

The black form next to his son was a little clearer, and he’d gamble his beard that Ichigo was encountering his first Shinigami.

As he returned downstairs to be the crazy idiot father his children knew him as, Isshin was honestly a little surprised it had taken as long as it had. Ichigo’s reiatsu had always been the strongest of the three, given the Hollow sealed in Masaki’s soul he had inherited, and over the last several weeks had increased greatly. Bugging Ryuken had gotten him to reveal that yes, a spike in reiatsu was normal, given Ichigo’s age. The girls would likely be spiking up soon, with how girls hit puberty earlier.

Crying to Yuzu about Ichigo’s latest hit, Karin grumbling in the background, he wondered if he’d need to bug Tessai, or Hachi, or both, about improving the shields on the house. If normal Pluses can enter, nevermind a Shinigami, then it was only a matter of time before—

His back exploded in pain and he crashed into the wall, blacking out to the sound of his girls screaming.

* * *

As the world painfully came into focus, he heard an unfamiliar voice, speaking as if it was a bad radio transmission. “Sto….human’s stre….break the kido! If you…your soul…” A blast wave of Ichigo’s reiatsu washed over him, and now he could hear the Hollow screaming as well.

Ichigo barreled downstairs, the less blurry form of the Shinigami at his heels, running to get Yuzu away from the Hollow. Gritting his teeth, Isshin painfully rolled over, pressing his back to the wall to put pressure on the bleeding as Ichigo set Yuzu down in an undamaged part of the room.

Yuzu as safe as she could be for the moment, he wondered where Kisuke was. He knew there was an alarm tied to the shields, so it wasn’t like the man would be ignorant of the situation. If he was nearby, then hopefully— “Take me instead!”

Isshin swore under his breath as Ichigo offered himself up to the Hollow, thinking it would help. The Shinigami dashed between Ichigo and the Hollow, getting bitten in the process.

“Fool…did you really think it would be over if you gave him your soul? You idiot!” The Shinigami, voice and form clear enough for him to identify as female, scolded Ichigo, leaning against the car parked across from the house.

“I’m sorry… I just wanted…” Guilt slumped his son’s shoulders, the way they always did on the anniversary of Masaki’s death.

“I’m afraid…I can’t console you… I’m too badly injured to fight, so it’s only a matter of time…until it eats us all.” Isshin was seriously beginning to wonder where the hell Kisuke was. If this was some kind of test for Ichigo, he would kick his ass to Seireitei and back.

He could see well enough to watch as the Shinigami bit her lip. “Do you wish to save your family?”

He couldn’t help rolling his eyes as Ichigo replied, “I’ll do anything! Just tell me how!”

“The only option we have…” She raised her zanpakutou. “…is for you to become a Shinigami!”

Ichigo was dumbfounded. “What…what the hell are you talking about?! I can’t—“

“You can!” She argued. “Place the zanpakutou over your heart, and I will infuse you with half of my reiatsu. You’ll become a Shinigami temporarily, and have a chance to defeat the Hollow.”

Isshin didn’t need to see Ichigo’s face to know he was doubtful. “Are you sure you can do something like that?” Isshin was a touch concerned too. Most Shinigami wouldn’t dream of this option, and you’d have to be fifth seat or higher to attempt it if you did.

“I don’t know. Your soul is so powerful, but…success isn’t guaranteed.” The zanpakutou shifted as her grip shifted. “We don’t have time to ponder the chances of success, and there’s no other way! So we have to at least try!”

“Ichi-nii…don’t…danger…” Yuzu murmured, still unconscious.

Ichigo’s resolved crystallized into diamond. “Gimme your sword Shinigami. We’ll try your plan.” He crouched down low enough for the zanpakutou to line up with his heart.

“Not ‘Shinigami’. Kuchiki Rukia.” Well, that explained how she knew of this unusual option, and that nagging familiarity in her face.

“I’m Kurosaki Ichigo. Let’s pray that this isn’t our last meeting.” Unnoticed by the pair, Isshin watched Ichigo’s back as the zanpakutou ran through his heart and a blast of reiatsu washed over him.

* * *

Rukia _had_ intended to only give Ichigo half of her power.

But Ichigo was still part-Quincy, and even untrained, it was still part of his nature to absorb reiatsu.

Ichigo also leaked power like a sieve.

Because of these two factors, enough power—enough shinigami power—left Ichigo to be picked up by Isshin, and all of Rukia’s powers to be taken. Isshin’s vision achieved a clarity that he hadn’t had in years.

Not since he gave up his power for a girl who would become his wife.

* * *

Despite the circumstances, Isshin was still proud to see Ichigo in the shihakushou, wielding the largest sealed sword he had ever seen. He hoped Kisuke had an asauchi on hand, or could easily get one. Somehow, he couldn’t see Ichigo willingly turning his back on fighting Hollows, not with the continued danger to the girls.

A ripple drew his eye, and then Ichigo was falling to his knees, clutching his stomach as another Hollow rippled into view. “Ichigo!” Rukia yelled. _Kaien-dono…Nii-sama…I’m sorry..._

Clenching his fists, Isshin forced himself to his feet. He hadn’t missed his power as a Shinigami as much he had expected, before this moment.

Before Masaki died, protecting Ichigo from a Hollow that should have been relatively easy for her.

As he prepared to lunge forward, a familiar presence perked up in his mind. _“Did you forget about me?”_

Isshin chuckled. “I apologize. I hadn’t realized my power had returned enough to call you.”

_“It hasn’t, not truly. But enough of the girl’s power leaked from your son to give me a chance of reaching you. Release me, and you’ll be back to full strength within months.”_ There was a pause. _“It will unseal the Hollow, however.”_

“Right now, I’m more concerned about the immediate danger. And I will place my trust in Ichigo.”

_“I hope I don’t need to remind you of my name.”_

“It would take a very long time for me to forget your name my friend.”

* * *

Ichigo awkwardly held his huge-ass sword in front of him, trying to stem the blood with his other hand. He didn’t think his guts were going to fall out, but there was no way he could fight like this. “Just have to…hope for a lucky strike…” He panted. “Sorry, Rukia…”

Rukia, now wearing only a white under robe stained red with blood, crawled over. “Where did that other Hollow come from? I’ve never heard of Hollows camouflaging themselves like that…” She whispered, twisting her hands in his shihakushou even as her wounds ached.

The Hollow seemed to be trying to make up its mind. The pair before it were strong, but he didn’t want to miss the ones in the house either.

“Hold my stomach.” Ichigo ordered, holding the sword ready in front of him as Rukia applied pressure, waiting for the Hollow to hurry up and get close enough for him to hit.

_“MOERO, ENGETSU!!!”_

The two barely registered the wave of burning reiatsu that hit them as a figure darted over their heads.

The Hollow split down the center of the mask, dissolving away before either half hit the ground.

Ichigo and Rukia could only stare at the figure, brandishing a sword—a zanpakutou—wreathed in ethereal fire. As the fire faded and he sheathed the weapon, a wind picked up, spreading the white cloth on his left arm enough to reveal the kanji for ‘ten’, set inside a black diamond.

Rukia felt her breath catch in her throat as she froze. _No wonder his soul is as strong as it is! No wonder a human was able to break a kidou binding!_

Ichigo was more vocal in his shock. “OYAJI!?!?!”


	2. Chapter 2

There was the sound of slow clapping behind Ichigo and Rukia, and craning their necks, the pair saw a man in old-style casual clothes, geta, and a hat shoved low on his head, hiding his eyes. There was another man, more muscled, with _holy shit that’s my body_ slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Welcome back, Shiba-taichou.” The first man said.

“I’m not a captain anymore Kisuke. Pretty sure I technically deserted.” Isshin corrected, turning to face the others.

Ichigo was taken aback at the serious look on his father’s face. It was one thing to see it in the clinic, where the only joking permitted was to cheer up younger patients; it was quite another to see it outside that occasion.

Rukia choked. “S-shiba-taichou?!” She exclaimed. “Shiba Isshin, captain of Tenth Division?! Kaien-dono’s—“ She snapped her mouth shut, pale in a way that Ichigo couldn’t completely contribute to blood loss.

“Can someone please explain what the hell is going on here?!” Ichigo’s patience was nonexistent at the moment. Weird ghosts with swords and terrible drawing skills, real-life monsters, gaining the power to deal with said monsters, and now his dad was one of them?! Mister The-room-could-be-full-of-ghosts-and-not-feel-it?!

“Right, you two need to be healed first. Then, I think it’s time for some explanations that I’ve held off on.” Isshin declared.

“You sure Kurosaki-sensei?” Hat’n’Clogs asked, opening his fan with a flick of his wrist and hiding his face even more.

“You really think I’d survive the night without providing them?” Isshin retorted, walking over to Ichigo and Rukia.

Somewhat familiar with the routine from the days the local punks had gotten the better of him, Ichigo leaned back on his elbows and stretched his legs out, Rukia still applying pressure to his stomach. He frowned when he realized she was trembling. She was tiny enough that he couldn’t rule out the chance that she was cold, but it seemed like the trembling was increasing the closer his dad got.

Crouching down, Isshin brushed Rukia’s hands aside and pulled open the shihakushou as gently as he could. The bleeding seemed to have slowed somewhat, and Ichigo grimaced as Isshin used the shihakushou to wipe away some of the blood, revealing a wound that cut deep into the muscle. Flexing his fingers, Isshin furrowed his brow, pale green light surrounding both hands. Ichigo tried not to jump at the warmth of the pale green light, focusing on how the wound, which should have taken dozens of stitches, if not staples, and several weeks of recovery, sealed up inside out in under a minute. Prodding his stomach, Ichigo still felt tender and ache-y, but the blood was the only sign that he had ever been injured.

“Ichigo, can you bring Karin downstairs? I may as well only do this once.” Isshin half asked, half directed, his eyes flicking over to Rukia for a brief moment.

Ichigo just nodded as he carefully got to his feet, fixing his clothes back. There was something up regarding Rukia and his dad, but he’d leave it be for now.

Rukia just blindly stared at Isshin, trembling. First she killed Kaien-dono, and now she nearly got his children killed because she had let herself be distracted by the novelty of a human capable of seeing her. He had seemed like a laid-back man, thinking back to the brief glimpse she remembered from one of his visits to the Thirteenth, but there was no way he could be that laid-back when it came to his family.

So she nearly jumped out of her skin when he ruffled her hair in a painfully familiar way. “Hey, I’m not that terrifying, am I?” Isshin’s attempt at a joke fell flat, so he turned his attention to her wounds. “May I? I’m afraid I’m a little too out of practice to want to heal without seeing the wounds.” He asked, tugging lightly on her under robe.

Slowly nodding, Rukia pulled the left side of her under robe down, marveling at how the Hollow’s teeth hadn’t shredded the bindings she didn’t need but wore anyway. She couldn’t stop how she relaxed under the familiar warmth of healing kido, even if she kept biting her lip and avoiding Isshin’s eyes. “You know Ukitake-san would have reported everything to the other Captains, right? Not to mention that the Shiba clan still had enough respect to justify full disclosure to the surviving family?” Isshin commented. “Thank you for helping him.”

“H-help?!” Rukia protested. “I killed—“

“If you hadn’t done what needed to be done, then who knows how much more havoc that Hollow could have caused, wearing Kaien’s body?” Isshin asked sternly. “It may have been cruel of him, using you as his sword, but I highly doubt that Hollow was completely incapable of avoiding your sword. And he wouldn’t have chosen you if he didn’t think you were strong enough to accept that burden. You saved him.”

Rukia started crying. “I’m not strong. I can’t even become a seated officer or apologize to Kaien-dono’s siblings or give Nii-sama a reason to truly _look_ at me—“

Isshin, done healing the wounds from the first Hollow, lightly smacked the back of her head. “Rank has nothing to do with how strong someone is. Kukaku has been waiting for you to work up the nerve to visit her; she was old enough to have heard all the details. As for Byakuya…” Isshin sighed. “I didn’t realize just how much he loved Hisana until I found myself in the same place as him; mourning a wife years too early but having to pretend otherwise. With how emotionally repressed he let the elders talk him into becoming, he likely still hasn’t dealt with his grief in a healthy way.”

“But why adopt me?” Rukia questioned, accepting the hand Isshin held out to help her stand.

“It’s not really my place to disclose what I think his reason is.” Isshin deflected. “That said, I do know Hisana was looking for someone when she died.”

Frowning but sensing that Isshin could not be pushed further on this, Rukia watched him pick up the girl Ichigo had retrieved from the Hollow and followed him into the house, skirting the debris of the shattered window and wall. “Kurosaki-sensei, I’ve put a temporary shield up. It should be good enough until I have the time to re-erect the permanent one.” The one taller muscled man said, moving to Isshin’s gigai? Body? To heal the injuries on its back.

Through some luck the chairs in the kitchen/dining area were intact, and Rukia sat in one, as Ichigo returned with the girl who had crawled up the stairs and Isshin tended to the other. “Dad?” The girl, with lighter brown hair, said as she opened her eyes. “Is the monster…?”

“The monster’s gone Yuzu.”

“What’s with that weird get up?” The other girl, with hair matching _Isshin-san?taichou?_ asked, sounding suspicious. “And who are these guys? You were at the door when I went I got to Ichi-nii’s room.” This last part was directed at Rukia.

Ichigo set her sketch pad on the table with a scowl. “You left this upstairs. I doubt they’ll understand your drawings any better than me.”

Scowling herself, Rukia punched his side as he sat next to her, his father (_that was a safe term, right?_) tending to the other girl, whose eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline at the healing kido.

“My name is Kuchiki Rukia. I’m a Shinigami; I help make sure that ghosts properly pass over to Soul Society.” She flipped open her sketch pad to the first drawing she had made. “The ghosts that people usually see, and the most common, are called Pluses. Things like the monster that attacked are known as Hollows—evil spirits, I think you’d call them.”

“Why are they called Hollows?” Yuzu asked.

“Because they’ve lost their hearts.” Rukia said simply, vaguely aware of the two strange men that had shown up doing…something…behind her. “When a person is still alive, the Chain of Fate connects their soul to their body. Death, naturally, breaks that chain, leaving some behind on the chest. Ghosts that are fixated on something, like a person or a place, become chained to the source of their fixation. Over time, the chain pulls away from their chest, and once the hole has formed completely, the ghost turns into a Hollow. The mask hides the face of they once were. Shinigami train to strike from behind if they can, and to cleave through the mask with one strike. Cutting through the mask disrupts the Hollow, and the sword of a Shinigami, zanpakutou, purifies the Hollow of the sins committed as a Hollow, freeing it and any other souls it has eaten to travel to Soul Society, or Heaven, in your terms.”

“That thing was once a person?!” The black haired girl exclaimed. “Wait, what’s this about eating souls?”

“A Hollow eats souls to ease the torment of a lost heart. So…the first targets of a new Hollow are usually their families. Have you heard of wives following their husbands to the grave? In death, the husband became a Hollow and ate her soul. After that…the preference is for strong souls. But how there hadn’t been a Hollow attack before tonight…” Rukia trailed off, looking at Isshin.

He sighed. “There were shields; they weren’t set to handle the spike in reiatsu from Ichigo. It had also kept out Pluses and Shinigami. Tessai can tell you more about the specifics.” He waved a hand at the taller man.

“So you’re a Shinigami like Rukia-nee?” The black haired girl asked her father. Even if it felt too early for the girl to use ‘-nee’, Rukia couldn’t help feeling touched that someone could call her that.

“Technically speaking…” Isshin ran a hair through his hair. “Shinigami don’t operate in vacuum; they’re organized into Divisions with different duties. I guess you could call it an army? There’s a whole training academy that takes six years to complete, not counting the geniuses who complete the six years in less. Shinigami aren’t the only people in Soul Society who can use reiatsu, but all Shinigami use reiatsu. Shinigami can train up their power and become a ‘seated’ officer—basically a squad leader. Above them is the lieutenant, and above them the captain. While in theory the captains of all thirteen divisions are equal, the captain of the First Division is the Captain-Commander, and he’s been in that position for a thousand years at least.”

“A thousand years?! How the hell does that work?” Ichigo demanded.

“Well there hasn’t been a lot of study, but in general, the higher a Shinigami’s reiatsu, the slower the aging process. It’s not a precise correlation, however.” Hat’n’Clogs explained. “The Captain-Commander founded the training academy for Shinigami two thousand years ago and he looks to be in his early seventies. But Captain Unohana of the Fourth Division—the medical division—is at least a thousand years old, but I wouldn’t place her over thirty five. Captain Kyoraku of the Eighth Division looks over forty, but his almost exact contemporary, Captain Ukitake of the Thirteenth Division and Kuchiki-chan’s Captain, looks under forty, white hair notwithstanding.”

“So how old are you Dad?” Yuzu asked.

Isshin looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “…four hundred? Five hundred? It’s probably more like four hundred forty. I became Captain of the Tenth Division ninety eight years ago, so that sounds right.” He finally decided.

“Yet you act like a five year old.” The black haired girl deadpanned.

Isshin pouted. “Karin, acting my age by count of years would mean I wouldn’t be doing anything.”

“So is being a Captain a big deal?” Ichigo asked, not quite believing that anyone would put his idiot dad in charge of other people.

Rukia couldn’t stop her snort. “Captains have mastered the various Shinigami arts to a high degree, and they’ve mastered both releases of their zanpakutou. Captains as well as lieutenants have a limiter placed on them restricting them to one fifth power in the World of the Living, so they don’t influence human souls into developing spiritual awareness or powers. And you’re of the Shiba clan, which, while disgraced, were still one of the founding clans of the Seireitei—where Shinigami live—and have a history of producing Captains and Lieutenants.”

“’Releases’?” Karin asked.

“Ah.” Hat’n’Clogs pulled a sword out of his haori, baffling the Kurosaki children, who couldn’t place how he kept that concealed. “The zanpakutou is a reflection of the soul of the Shinigami who carries it. Entering the Academy, each receives a blank blade known as an asauchi.” He gestured with said asauchi. “As the Shinigami trains and grows in power, their Inner World develops, and the spirit of the zanpakutou will reveal itself. Learn the name of your zanpakutou and you can use the first release, Shikai.”

Setting the asauchi down on the table in front of Ichigo, he picked up the over-sized zanpakutou that had appeared with Ichigo. “This is just a hunk of reiatsu that’s shaped like a zanpakutou and acts like one, but just about every Shinigami with Shikai could cut through it like it was hot butter.” Flicking his fingers against the blade, it snapped in two.

“And I need an asauchi because…” Ichigo had a feeling that this ‘temporary’ Shinigami thing was going to be a hell of a lot more permanent than he expected.

“Ichigo, at your strength, any shield that would conceal your reiatsu would be very complex and can only be erected on a permanent location. And even if you have such a location, you would still have to leave it for basic supplies. If you’re not prepared to become a hermit in the middle of nowhere, it’s not a realistic option.” Isshin said, for once seeming older. “And that’s just you. I flared my reiatsu healing Yuzu so she could see us like this, meaning she’s on par with Karin now. At this point, the only way any of you could avoid being a target for Hollows would be to seal two points known as the Saketsu and the Hakusui. The first is equivalent of the Chain of Fate in humans, while the second is a source of spiritual power. And there’s no going back from that.”

Deciding to leave that be for now, Isshin changed tack. “For now, having an asauchi should make it easier for you to learn the name of your zanpakutou, which will help Rukia-chan regain her powers faster.”

Rukia just stared at Isshin, wide-eyed. “But it takes years of training to even hear a zanpakutou spirit! I wouldn’t rule it out with how strong Ichigo is, but I’ve got two months before I’m reported overdue and a retrieval team sent out! It’s outrageous to think a zanpakutou’s name can be learned in two months!”

“Hitsugaya Toshirou, my Third Seat officer, had been dreaming of his zanpakutou spirit for years before he even set foot in the Academy, and it didn’t take him that long to learn its name once he was in the Academy. One thing I’ve learned these last two decades is that humans are great at making the impossible possible. The potential for growth, and fast growth, is greater than for someone in Soul Society, because humans don’t have maybe forever to learn things.” Isshin commented. “I have to wonder if the ‘geniuses’ who clear the Academy in a year aren’t just the people who have the drive to not take forever.”

“…why did you leave, anyway?” Karin asked. “Did you get kicked out?”

“It was because of your mother.” Isshin said, preparing himself for the questions to come.

“Mom?” Yuzu frowned. “Could she see ghosts too?”

Ichigo frowned himself. Mom had never doubted him when he talked about ghosts, but he never had any indications that she could see them too.

“Masaki was a type of human with spiritual power called a Quincy.” Isshin opened. “Making a long story exceedingly short for tonight, Quincies were at odds with Seireitei, since unlike Shinigami, Hollows killed by Quincies are flat out destroyed. This disrupts the balance of souls between the World of the Living and Soul Society, and if it gets too out of balance, then the walls between the two worlds, plus the world that Hollows retreat to, could fall. There was a war two hundred years ago that killed most Quincies. I was still in the Fourth Division at the time, and so I wasn’t involved in the fighting.” He added this as Karin opened her mouth, likely to ask if he had been fighting. “So by twenty years ago, Masaki was all that was left of the Kurosaki clan of Quincies. She was supposed to marry her cousin, but while they certainly cared for each other, they were more like brother and sister.

“It was at that time that reports of Shinigami dying in Naruki City started coming in. With how one of the dead Shinigami was a lieutenant in all but name, I went alone to investigate, since it was my division on rotation. I dismissed the Shinigami on duty to investigate myself, but that wasn’t enough to save them.” Isshin began. “While it was a Hollow, it was unlike any Hollow I had ever seen; completely black save for its mask and a filled-in hole.”

“How can that happen?” Rukia asked, horrified.

“Not naturally.” Hat’n’Clogs stated needlessly.

“It felt like a Hollow, but it fought like a Shinigami. I entered Shikai, and was preparing to go into Bankai, when something or someone attacked me from behind. Something other than the Hollow.”

“So this was some crazy guy’s field test or something?!” Ichigo exclaimed. It was bad enough to learn that things like Hollows existed; now there’s ones even stranger?!

“Probably. I was too injured to enter Bankai, and I didn’t have the option to retreat to heal myself enough. I blew up one arm, but it still pinned me. That was when there was a hail of spirit arrows, and its focus changed to the new attacker.” Isshin continued.

“Mom.” Yuzu said.

Isshin nodded. “Quincies generally use archery. Having gotten its attention, Masaki realized she couldn’t get a clean hit. So, she decided to let the thing bite her.”

“Offering herself up to a Hollow…I’m seeing the family resemblance.” Rukia commented, looking at Ichigo out the corner of her eye, making him scowl even more.

For some reason, hearing that reminded him of that day in the rain, on the river bank.

“Masaki could shrink her bow down to be small enough to be used one-handed, so she had a point-blank shot. Then…the Hollow suddenly expanded, and I was able to push her far enough away for me to take the brunt of the blast when it self-destructed.” Isshin said, a crooked, fond smile on his face, tingled with regret. “If I knew then, what I know now… The true damage had already been done. It had injected a piece of itself into her, starting a process called ‘Hollowification’. You can bug Kisuke—“ He waved a hand at Hat’n’Clogs. “—about the precise details, but in short, a Quincy was never meant to undergo something like that, so eventually…her soul would have self-destructed—‘Soul Suicide’.”

“I have been studying Hollowification for almost a century, and I had discovered a way to stop Soul Suicide, but this required a more powerful solution.” Hat’n’Clogs, Kisuke, took over. “By binding Shiba-taichou’s soul to Masaki-san’s with reishi strings, his powers would stop the Soul Suicide and the Hollowification. Shinigami and Hollow stand as opposites, as do Human and Quincy. The process would be sealed with a special gigai, fake body, effectively rendering Shiba-taichou a human with a shinigami soul, but completely unable to leave said gigai or have any reiatsu, since it would be tied up binding the Hollow inside Masaki-san’s soul. For her whole life or it left her soul.”

“And you just gave up your powers just like that, for someone you’d only met once, and whose people had been mostly wiped out by yours?!” Karin didn’t think her dad was THAT stupid, even if her deeply buried ‘girly’ side was squealing at the romantic appeal of the situation.

“She save my life! If I let her, or anyone, die when I had the power to stop it, there’s no way I could look at myself in the mirror after that!” Isshin said emphatically. “Anyway, the only subject I had paid much attention to in the Academy was medicine, so Kisuke helped me set up a clinic and get used to the World of the Living. She had been in her last year of high school when we met, so while she was university, she’d stop in and tease me about trading my black in for white. I had told her I had gotten kicked out and my power bound for breaking the rules but…I know she didn’t believe me. We started dating and…” He gestured at his children.

The group at the table just sat there, absorbing this slew of information. “…that explains so much about your ignorance…” Ichigo marveled, when he realized something. “Hold on, if you were born in this Soul Society…does that mean you WEREN’T joking when you claimed you were an alien banished from another planet?!?!” Ichigo had spent a year silently and furiously blaming Isshin for his weird hair color based on that, until he realized it was a joke.

He thought.

“Well Soul Society’s another plane of existence, so if you want to be broad in your definitions…” Isshin waffled, having (mostly) forgotten that joke.

Standing up, Ichigo walked around and punched Isshin in the face. Rukia gaped, while Yuzu and Karin took it in stride and the two strangers, Kisuke and Tessai, said nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else think that the Kurosaki Clinic/House was shielded in some way, since literally the ONLY time a Hollow attacks is the first chapter and Orihime's brother, who may have been stalking Ichigo that night? Not to mention ghosts in general and Shinigami? Something's up with why Ichigo never saw a Shinigami or a Hollow before that night. Plot notwithstanding.


	3. Chapter 3

Isshin brushed off the punch, since it had far less force then it usually do. “So! Any immediate questions?” He asked.

Karin and Yuzu seemed overwhelmed still, while Ichigo looked like he had questions that he didn’t want an audience for when he asked them. “Where can I get a gigai? Given the situation, it’s not like I can request one…” Rukia asked.

“Don’t worry Kuchiki-chan!” Kisuke chirped. “I’ll get you squared away with a gigai and legal existence for your extended time here. I suggest you room here; while cases like this are rare, being exposed to Kurosaki-kun’s reiatsu can only help I think.”

“Are we good with the shields for the night at least Tessai?” Isshin asked.

Tessai nodded as he began shepherding Rukia outside behind Kisuke.

It was then that Yuzu and Karin noticed Ichigo’s body and Isshin’s long-term gigai. “So how do we know you’re not dead for real?” Karin asked as the two males re-entered their bodies, Ichigo glancing at Isshin for cues.

He was off balance enough for his glancing to be noticeable.

“I know there’s these ‘artificial souls’ that they’ve developed to basically guard the gigai and not leave it lying around, but since I’ve never used one I can’t tell you much about them or how it works.” Isshin replied, cracking his back before going to the broom closet. “For now I promise not to leave my body lying around without warning.”

“Did Mom still have her powers after the thing with the Hollow?” Yuzu asked, retrieving the dishes that managed to survive the attack in one piece.

“As far as I know. She never mentioned anything about training you kids and I never asked. It was almost an unspoken agreement between us, not to mention or bring up anything relating to Shinigami or Quincies or Hollows. I know she’d go out at least once a month to practice, and there was one time where she defended herself, but…” Isshin shrugged as he swept, Karin picking up the larger broken pieces and Ichigo mopping up the spilled soup and drinks. “I do know that she had been under a lot of pressure as the last of a long line of Quincies, so I think she was mostly happy to put that behind her. Even though it was sealed, she was still ‘tainted’ by the Hollow, so it was the perfect excuse for her to break off the arrangement with her cousin without much protest in any quarter.”

“So Quincy are basically humans with high spiritual awareness who managed to weaponize it?” Ichigo asked. “I mean, if Hollows are drawn to people like that, and if they can’t figure out how to hide it or something…”

“As far as I understand it. There was a tiny fraction that had been trying for some kind of mutual agreement, where Quincies would be like a first response force that would at least contain Hollows and minimize damage until Shinigami could arrive on the scene, but saying Seireitei is set in their ways is understating things. Do you remember Grandpa Rin?” Isshin asked, getting nods from the kids. “He was the one who had been advocating that choice, but it died with him. His son, Masaki’s cousin Ryuuken, was pretty much done with anything involving Quincies, let alone Shinigami. His son is around Ichigo’s age, but I don’t know where he stands.”

Yuzu tried to stifle a yawn as she stored what food from dinner survived, but failed. “So can Karin and I learn some of the Shinigami stuff too? Or what Mom could do?”

“Yes to the first; I’ll need to bug Ryuuken about the second.” Isshin promised, taking the vacuum from Karin, who looked barely awake.

“You two should head to bed; Goat Face and I can finish cleaning up.” Ichigo gently suggested, ushering the girls to the stairs and sending Isshin a look.

Vacuuming the area, Isshin made tea. He was tired, but too wired to think about resting yet. Hearing Ichigo on the stairs, he poured a second cup.

“You and Hat’n’Clogs are leaving something out about that Hollow that possessed Mom.” Ichigo said directly, looking nearly as tired as the girls but too stubborn to give in until he shook the last few answers out of Isshin. “And Karin wanted to know how you recovered your powers tonight, but I’m not sure if she’ll remember it in the morning.”

Quiet echoed, with the usual sounds of the night louder than normal, since there was a hole where the window had been. Ichigo was perfectly prepared to wait out Isshin on this, since his gut told him that it was important. And he had no clue if or when he’d be as forthcoming again.

“…it was when Masaki was pregnant with you. Kisuke had been monitoring it on the reiatsu front, and when he checked yours’, he kept getting weird readings. Sometimes it would come up ‘Hollow’, sometimes ‘Shinigami’, sometimes ‘Quincy’, and once the whole sensor crashed and caught on fire. Everything was normal otherwise, Masaki’s bizarre cravings aside, so all of us—Masaki, me, Kisuke, and Ryuuken—agreed that real answers would likely come after you were born.” Isshin stirred his tea, mostly to occupy his hands. “The first readings after you were born, for both of you, were unusual. Kisuke could only detect a trace of the Hollow in Masaki, while you…” Isshin made himself meet Ichigo’s eyes. “It was predominantly Human, but beneath that, was what was best described as a swirl of Shinigami, Quincy, and Hollow. Kisuke theorized that the Hollow attached itself to your soul in utero, and the contrary readings were because your soul was trying to work out just what to be. To my knowledge there’s never been a child of a Shinigami and a Quincy, nevermind tossing Hollow into the mix. His best guess was that all three of these powers would be expressed in the spirit of your zanpakutou, if you ever gained one. And that the Hollow, while present, was still bound, which my lack of power bore out.”

“Until tonight.” Ichigo stated.

“Even an untrained Quincy can still absorb reishi and reiatsu, and since you’ve never learned any suppression or control techniques, you leaked out enough of Rukia-chan’s power to let me see her and the Hollow. And give my zanpakutou spirit, Engetsu, a way to reach me. Releasing him was what restored my power.”

“And unsealing the Hollow, if it hadn’t already been.” Ichigo continued.

“We were only sure that you had inherited the Hollow when Masaki died. If it was still in her, I should have regained at least a fraction of my power with her death, even if becoming a Shinigami again was beyond me.” Isshin said.

It was a small eternity before Ichigo spoke again. “…that day…do…do you think…?” Ichigo asked in a whisper, scarcely able to voice the question.

“Kisuke’s sensors did detect a Hollow that day, in that place. But as to what happened…” Isshin answered quietly. “The only one who would likely know is…”

Isshin just watched Ichigo as he finished his tea, looking painfully young. By Soul Society standards he was barely more than a baby. Isshin had appeared Ichigo’s age when he entered the Academy, but by count of years he was already a century old. “I’m not going to act as Rukia’s replacement.” Ichigo said after his cup was empty. “I’m not going to fight Hollows out of revenge or duty or loyalty to some far off place. I’ll fight Hollows to protect as many people as I can, so they never have to experience what I did.”

Standing, he placed his cup in the sink. As he passed behind Isshin on his way to the stairs, he grabbed one of his shoulders. “…thank you for telling me…”

Isshin stared at the stairs after him, not looking away until the sounds upstairs told him Ichigo was in bed. Glancing at the clock, he did a double take at the time. “It’s not even midnight yet?” He muttered to himself. It wasn’t even much past ten o’clock.

His back still aching from the freshly healed wounds, he stood, walking over to the poster that so embarrassed his kids. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head against it. “I wish our children didn’t have to walk this path.” He whispered. “But the only way I can see to keep them safe…is to teach them how to protect themselves…”

For once he felt every minute of his four hundred some years as he went upstairs, peeking in on his children. Karin and Yuzu were huddled together in the same bed, while Ichigo was holding onto his old baby blanket that he had loudly declared he didn’t need anymore on the first anniversary of Masaki’s death. Isshin had quietly tucked it in Ichigo’s room after retrieving it from the trash can, making sure to place in a spot Ichigo favored when he wanted to hide something. Masaki had quilted it together in the colors of their clans (and the Tenth Division), and stitched daffodils and crosses in a style matching the shape her family favored, swirling Shiba spirals with the Kurosaki peaks on the border.

Yuzu had hers spread on top of her bed; Karin preferred hiding hers under her pillow.

His last check on the children done, he settled down in bed himself, after kissing the picture of Masaki he kept on the nightstand. Ichigo was in her lap, and the girls tugging her sleeves, standing on chubby baby legs. While she had caught him right before he took the picture, the laugh was still in her eyes and her smile.

* * *

_The sound of cloth billowing in the wind. “This is…most unfortunate…”_

_A snort, and the sense of a sneer. “Like I’m any happier about this. You want him weak.”_

_A narrow-eyed glare. “I want to protect him—“_

_“By leaving him powerless!” The electricity-like crackle of energy. “Being powerless won’t stop the fuckers who caused this!”_

_“There’s still two years.”_

_“On your side. My side? You KNOW he’ll go chasing after the girl if the Shinigami bastards even glance at her wrong. And that’s not adding in the bastards who fucking created me!”_

_“…I tolerated you better when you were gagged.”_

_“And I’d tolerate you better if you left.”_

_The sense of glaring at everything like it offended. “I hate the rain.”_

_“…so do I.” The three words sounded like they pained the speaker to voice._

_A look out of a corner of an eye, considering. “…if it’s to stop the rain, will you work with me to make him stronger?”_

_A blink. “It’s not like either of us can really leave until he comes here himself, right? He’s never been trained, so…”_

_“…to stop the rain, I will cooperate with you.”_

_A touch of amusement. “He hears us.”_

_“Hurry up and get in here King, and pick which of us you’ll keep.”_

* * *

Ichigo slowly opened his eyes, trying to place what was wrong with the world. “Aside from the voices.” He muttered to himself. They weren’t talking at the moment, but there was still the sense that they were hovering at the edge of his sight. The details of his dream were fading fast, but he could tell there was two of them, and they were in reluctant neutrality.

Hearing/feeling his father in the hall, he glanced at the clock.

Isshin was a minute late for his wake up attack.

That’s what was wrong.

Ichigo sat up as Isshin launched himself into the room. Absently dodging, Ichigo wandered to the bathroom as Isshin hit the bed, ramming it against the wall. “Can’t you give that a rest after what happened last night?” Ichigo asked when he wandered back out after finishing his morning business, Isshin still on his bed.

His brain caught up to his words. “LAST NIGHT?!” Ichigo practically leapt down the stairs to the first floor, needing to lay eyes on Yuzu and Karin.

Karin was staring at the hole, while Yuzu fluttered around the kitchen. “And I had been hoping it was just a weird dream.” Karin commented when she heard Ichigo impact the wall of the stairwell.

“What do we tell people?” Yuzu fretted. “Even if they couldn’t hear or see the Hollow, shouldn’t they have noticed the wall exploding?”

“Even if they had, bystander syndrome and ‘it’s someone else’s problem’ usually takes care of them getting involved. The only thing I can think of to explain it is a truck crash.” Isshin said as he disappeared into his morning coffee.

“A truck crash that no one saw or heard, that didn’t take out the bushes?” Karin questioned flatly, sitting down at the table.

“People default to the most believable explanation.” Isshin came up out of his coffee long enough to point this out.

Ichigo just poked his food, hungry yet not wanting to eat. “Are you okay Ichi-nii?” Yuzu asked as she sat down herself for breakfast.

“It’s just…sinking in that what happened last night was real.” He replied, starting to eat under her concerned gaze.

Karin nodded her agreement, watching Isshin start his third cup of coffee already. “So is your love affair with coffee because you’d never had it before living here?” She asked, everyone understanding what she meant by ‘here’.

Properly caffeinated, Isshin started on his food. “About the best analogy for Seireitei is Tokugawa Japan in terms of what you would call culture. The Fourth Division had some ‘modern’ medical equipment, and the Twelfth Division, which is Science and Research, is the most up to date on Living World technology. But food?” Isshin shrugged. “Exceedingly ‘traditional’. And no bacon.”

“No bacon?” Yuzu repeated, wide-eyed. “But it’s not breakfast without bacon!”

Karin and Ichigo nodded in agreement. “I don’t care what Rukia-nee says; Soul Society is not Heaven if there’s no bacon.” Karin declared.

“Well in Soul Society, if you don’t have reiatsu you don’t need to eat. Maybe in another century or two bacon will reach Soul Society.” Isshin said, having grown extremely fond of bacon over the last two decades.

* * *

Glancing at the caller ID, Ryuuken answered. “Whatever you want the answer’s no.”

He didn’t even need to see Shiba to know he was pouting. “You don’t even know what I’m asking!”

“Like I missed that flare of reiatsu last night. Or the one before it that I didn’t recognize.” Ryuuken added. “So your son’s become a Shinigami?”

“Yes. If a second Hollow hadn’t been camouflaged, I likely wouldn’t have had a need to release Engetsu or break the seals.”

“…any problems?”

“It’s hardly been twelve hours. I’ve told the kids the truth.” Shiba said, almost unnecessarily. “Yuzu asked if she and Karin could learn some of what Masaki knew, and I think Ichigo would like to know as well.”

“There’s no proof a Shinigami can use Quincy techniques.” Ryuuken argued, mentally reviewing the focuses he had in storage despite himself.

“And there’s no proof of the opposite.” Shiba pointed out. “We’re not sure what will work with Ichigo until we try it. And as much as it pains me to concede, spirit bows are a touch more convenient a weapon than a zanpakutou or asauchi, when it comes to carry and use.”

“You admitting Quincy are better at something? I need to mark my calendar.” Ryuuken said with a smirk. “Give me another call once your kids can draw a standard bow and hit the center at least seven times out of ten.”

“You remember where Kisuke’s shop is?”

“Unfortunately. He’s the only reasonably priced vendor for my brand in the area.” Without waiting for Shiba to give a farewell or continue prattling on, Ryuuken hung up.

Without thinking, his eyes found the photo he kept in a spot only he could see. Kanae and Masaki with Uryuu and Ichigo, Masaki’s stomach rounded with her twin girls. Uryuu and Ichigo were eyeing each other, and about ten minutes after the photo was taken had started arguing over whose mother was better. The ‘playdate’ ended with one split lip for Uryuu and a bruised forehead for Ichigo.

She had wanted her children to choose for themselves whether or not to learn the Quincy Arts, but That Day had come before she had a chance to give them that choice.

‘Ne, Ryuu-kun, if something happens to me, and Ichigo and the girls need to learn, will you teach them?’

_Idiot Shinigami, didn’t you know what I had promised Masaki?_ “I wonder how long before Uryuu’s pride makes him confront Ichigo?” He asked out loud, before he turned his attention back to his work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie; disappointed that there was only one comment last chapter. Comments feed my soul.


	4. Chapter 4

Rukia hadn’t been in her gigai for twenty four hours, and she had already filled a page front and back (!) with questions.

And classes were just now breaking for lunch.

In some ways, Karakura High School was similar to the Academy. The cleaning rotations, teachers moving between rooms, the schedule blocking…

But the subjects were strange. She was positive that Math was not meant to include romanji letters (which she had never heard of before), and she only had a vague awareness of ‘English’. Romanji letters were how you wrote in English, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of the pronunciation.

And why there were tiny kana letters above the kanji. It was a little distracting, but helpful for the terms she couldn’t figure out how to read the kanji in a way that made sense.

She was seriously considering adding a mechanical pencil to her sketch pad and marker. Less messy, and there was even a way to erase her mistakes!

Tessai, Urahara’s assistant (?) had made her a bento, which was reassuringly familiar as she eyed some of the food the other students were eating. Ichigo’s presence saturated the classroom, but she hadn’t seen him yet—

“I’m still alive Keigo.”

Turning in her seat, she spied Ichigo strolling in. His reiatsu felt tired, and swirled with Shinigami and Human and Hollow and something she didn’t know, which had to be the Quincy.

“So a truck crashed into your house?” The boy Ichigo had addressed asked.

“Yeah. Some jackass in the middle of the night. Didn’t even leave a note.” Ichigo confirmed.

Frowning, it took Rukia a moment to picture what a truck was. Once she had, she mentally agreed that such a scenario would fit the hole. “Do you need help cleaning up?” A tall boy, with a touch of Ichigo’s reiatsu ghosting his own presence, asked.

“Eh…no thanks Chad. We’re good.”

_Chad? That didn’t sound Japanese…_ “So this is the infamous Kurosaki-kun?” She asked as she walked over, pitching her voice to sound more like the other girl students.

She had written a message on her hand, warning him against making a scene, but his only reaction was a slight widening of his eyes. “’Infamous’? Keigo have you been telling wild tales about me again?” He asked.

“Asano-san only speaks the truth.” A different boy commented, making the first boy wail about being addressed so formally.

“Ne Kurosaki-kun, if you have last period free, could you show me around the campus? I was home schooled before moving here, so I have no clue where things would be.” She asked, trying to convey with her eyes that he really needed to say ‘yes’.

“Ah…sure?” Ichigo agreed, not sounding sure.

“Thank you!” With that, she returned to her desk and lunch. _I really hope I don’t get called on this afternoon, since talking like that is painful._

* * *

Ichigo loaded his book bag with what he’d need for homework before following Rukia out the room. Mostly because he figured that this ‘campus tour’ would likely be ‘Hollow hunting.’ “Look if you’re gonna be throwing me out of my body then we need to hide it so we don’t come back to EMTs trying to revive me. Or having to break into the morgue.” He said when she pulled on a bright red glove, with a weird symbol on the palm that he just knew would kick him out of his body.

She frowned. “’Emts?’” She repeated, or tried to.

“E-M-T. Emergency Medical Technicians. If someone gets hurt they’re called to get the person to the hospital once it’s safe to move them.” He explained.

“Right, that is a thing isn’t it?” She questioned. “Normally I don’t need to worry about that, but Urahara didn’t have gikon in stock.”

“Dad had said something about ‘artificial souls’ or something…” He remembered as Rukia didn’t even wait for him to sit in the hiding spot he chose before shoving him out of his body.

The two presences he had felt since dreaming last night felt stronger, and for some reason, the single asauchi Hat’n’Clogs had given him was now an oudachi on his back, and a koudachi on his right hip. “Am I supposed to have two?” He asked, noting the tsuka ito of the oudachi was black revealing red, and was white revealing red on the koudachi.  
She blinked. “The only dual zanpakutou I know of are Ukitake-taichou’s and Kyoraku-taichou’s, but Ukitake-taichou’s is a single sword when it’s sealed.”

Letting it go, he asked, “So where are we going?”

“I’d thought you’d be protesting this a little more.” She commented, setting a brisk pace to the park.

He just gave her a flat look. “I didn’t miss what Goat Face was implying last night. So let me be clear; I’m not doing this to do your job for you or some kind of duty or to pay you back. I will protect as many people as I can. Because you can’t tell me that duty was why you threw yourself between me and fish-face last night.”

“I wasn’t thinking last night. Kaien-dono would have scolded me about being so reckless.” She said mournfully.

_This is the second time she's mentioned ‘Kaien-dono’. _“So who is Kaien in relation to Oyaji?” He asked as they arrived at the park.

“…he was Isshin-taichou’s nephew, and the lieutenant of my division, Division Thirteen. I was adopted into the Kuchiki clan and graduated early, and he treated me like everyone else, even when others kept their distance. He’s…” She trailed off, pulling out her cell phone type device to hide how watery her eyes were. “Are there any Pluses you know of that like this park?”

“A little boy.” He held his hand to just below his waist. “He always shows up around lunch, but I have seen around this time if the park’s empty for some reason. Why?”

She showed him her cell phone thing. “There’s a prediction of a Hollow attack here in a few minutes, probably for the boy.” She leaned against a tree, trying to look like she wasn’t waiting. “What IS ‘English’?”

“It’s another language. It’s mostly spoken in America and England, but I know science and medical journals publish in English as a common international language.” He explained. “Is Soul Society just for Japan then?”

“I know there’s other jurisdictions, but it’s not common for there to be contact or collaboration between them, even at Captain level. The last collaboration was while I was in the Academy, on some islands in the ‘Pacific’.” She replied, flipping open a notebook and writing down something.

“The Pacific Ocean; it’s the ocean to the East. Aside from some islands, it’s all ocean until you run into the Americas. It was probably for causalities in World War II.” He noted, reaching for the zanpakutou on his back as something in the air changed.

Rukia just watched as Ichigo walked into the open area of the park, drawing both zanpakutou, frowning a little. _What’s he reacting to? There’s not—_

A tear opened up in the air, revealing a flash of blackness before a Hollow came out.

Her Soul Pager started beeping as Ichigo charged the Hollow, slashing vertically with the large zanpakutou in his right hand and horizontally with the small zanpakutou in his left hand. The beeping stopped as the Hollow divided into four pieces, the spaces between briefly looking like the kanji for ‘ten’ as the piece dissolved away.

He looked back at Rukia, and they blinked at each other. To say things lasted even half a minute would be generous. “Ooookaaayyyy…” He drew out as the little boy ghost appeared, tapping his forehead with the butt of the large zanpakutou and not realizing he had done so until the black butterfly passed his line of sight.

Freezing, the two looked at each other before darting back to where they had left his body.

* * *

Mercifully it was a slow day at the clinic, letting Isshin call up a contractor to fix the hole and replace the window. And catch up on paperwork.

“Why does everything require so much paperwork?” He asked himself for what was hardly the first or last time, double-checking that he had input the invoices correctly.

True, as a Captain he had fled from paperwork, but that paperwork had been for minor things like verifying training rosters or confirming the receipt of training dummies. Here, not doing paperwork could mean someone’s life or if he could put food on the table. Kisuke and the others basically lived ‘off the grid’, barring Kisuke’s properties.

He didn’t have that option, not with his kids.

Inputting the last item (tax write off for new equipment), he looked up as Ichigo and Rukia burst through the door. “Alright what got broken?” He asked, taking in how it looked like they had sprinted the whole distance.

“Nothing’s physical’s broken, but Ichigo felt a Hollow was coming through before it appeared, killed it, and passed on the boy ghost that may have been its target in the span of a minute.” Rukia panted, sinking into a chair. _Damn gigai and R&D’s obsession with appearance over capability!_ “So the rules as I know them are broken.”

Isshin looked at Ichigo, recovering faster. “All I know is that when I went in my body last night I had one zanpakutou and this afternoon when I left it I had two.” He added, passing Rukia a cup of water.

Isshin raised his eyebrows. “That’s new for me too. But fits with Kisuke’s theories.”

“Theories?” Rukia asked, draining a second cup and getting her breathing under control.

Isshin and Ichigo exchanged a look. “…Hat’n’Clogs thinks I might have inherited the Hollow that possessed Mom.” Ichigo said finally. “And that it’s my zanpakutou spirit. Or one of them.”

Rukia choked on her sip of water. Coughing, she asked, “You’ve seen your zanpakutou spirit?!”

“Not seen, yet. But last night I dreamed of two voices, and all day I’ve felt like I got a pair of people hovering over my shoulders, like the angel and the devil.” Ichigo countered with a shake of his head.

Rukia didn’t quite understand the reference, but it brought up the images of the Third Seat officers on either side of Ukitaku-taichou.

“Well the contractor fit us in tomorrow morning, so Tessai will be resetting the permanent shields then.” Isshin informed them.

“That was quick.” Ichigo commented as he moved through the short hallway connecting the house and the clinic.

“It’s the guy who had his one worker collapse with appendicitis, so…” Shrugging, Isshin turned to Rukia, who was still sitting in the chair.

Now that she had recovered from her sprint, her face had a pole-axed expression. “Culture shock?” He asked, remembering how he had spent six months in culture shock as he adjusted.

“About the only useful thing is ‘keep your head down and watch the humans for cues’.” She complained. “And the food’s strange, and that’s a lot coming from an Inuzuri native.”

“Western culture’s influence has really increased, and with the lag between here and Soul Society…Yuzu’s the cook, so let her know if you’d prefer more traditional foods.” Isshin informed her.

“Please, I’m an Inuzuri rat. I’ll eat anything as long as I don’t see someone keel over from it.” She informed him with the nearly trademarked Kuchiki Look of Disdain.

He just held up his hands in surrender.

* * *

That night, Ichigo just sighed, toweling his hair dry as he exited the bathroom. Apparently ‘modern’ plumbing existed in Seireitei, so that was one disaster avoided.

If only he could have dodged the disaster called ‘Math Homework’.

First the part about her doing it in the first place, which had been won by him. Arguing that she would stand out less if she did the homework, and would have more leeway in skipping classes if her grades were good.

Even though she seemed to think that it wasn’t something she’d have to deal with for long.

And then came the doing.

After an hour of shouting and grinding knuckles into heads and kicked shins, Ichigo had given up, retreating down to the clinic to get his homework done in peace.

“Ichi-nii!”

Reaching the top of the stairs, he saw Yuzu opening his door. “Can’t you knock?” He asked.

Noticing his fresh-bathed state, she pouted. “I wanted to take a bath with you!”

“Check with Karin. Or Rukia.” He had no idea how Rukia would take that request, but he was still pissed off a little from the math battle.

“You’re meaner now that you’re in high school!” Yuzu complained. “And have you seen Rukia? Dad put the extra cot in our room and the pajamas I lent her are gone, but I haven’t seen her lately.”

“I’m not meaner. And no about seeing Rukia.” Ichigo said as he entered his room.

With another pout, Yuzu bid him good night and went to find Karin.

“Where is Rukia hiding anyway? It’s not like this place is that big…” He wondered.

He could feel her, just like he could feel his dad and his sisters, but he couldn’t place her, not like with his family or Chad or Tatsuki (both of whom he could locate with his eyes closed).

Sitting on his bed, some kind of beeping started up. “What’s beeping at this time of night?” He asked out loud.

His closet door flew open, revealing Rukia. “Ichigo!”

“What the—“ Even as he yelled, something made Ichigo dive out the corner his bed was in.

Rukia dove at his head with her glove, crashing with his body into the wall as he leapt back at his bed, a Hollow’s hand slamming down where he had just sat down.

The head stuck through the wall, and even as he swung he could tell the strike would be too shallow. His glancing blow cracked the mask, and a piece crumbled off, giving Ichigo a quick look at his face before he vanished back to wherever Hollows were when they weren’t hunting souls.

Isshin, Yuzu, and Karin crowded in the door. “I thought there was shields up?!” Ichigo demanded.

“There WERE!!! Either that Hollow was really powerful or after you to start with!” Isshin yelled back.

“Nevermind that! I think it had been Inoue’s brother so I gotta go after him before he gets her!” Grabbing Rukia by the collar, he slung her over his shoulder and leapt out the window he’d opened for some breeze.

“HOLD ON A MI—“ Rukia’s voice trailed into a scream as Ichigo started roof jumping.

“…don’t tell me there’s gonna be a monster attacking us every night.” Karin finally said. “C’mon Yuzu; let’s take that bath while Goat Face cleans up and brings the cot in to replace Ichi-nii’s bed.” Herding Yuzu away, she left Isshin surveying the damage.

With a sigh, Isshin pulled out the cell phone Kisuke had given him as a direct line to him. “Hey, Kisuke? Can you send Tessai over? I think I need that permanent shield tonight…”

* * *

About two hours later, Ichigo and Rukia climbed back in the room through the window. “Wait so if that second Hollow hadn’t attacked and Goat Face gotten his powers back, you’d have used that thing on my family?” Ichigo asked.

“It’s operating procedure. I’m not sure it would have worked on you or Isshin-taichou, even without his power.” Rukia replied. “Unfortunately the memories picked to replace the ones relating to Hollows and Shinigami are totally random.”

“Well it’s Inoue; Tatsuki’s told me some of her daydreams. I doubt whatever gets put in to replace what actually happened will be any crazier than her usual stuff.” Ichigo commented, sliding back into his body. “Now for the more important thing…WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING IN MY CLOSET?!?!”

“TRYING TO SLEEP BEFORE THE PAGER WENT OFF!!!”

“YOU CAN’T JUST CAMP OUT IN THERE—!!!”

A soccer ball crashed into his head, thrown by a sleepy and irritated Karin. Catching it on the rebound, she just glared at the two loud mouths, before pointing out the futon laid out that neither had noticed. “Go. To. Bed.”

Wandering back to her and Yuzu’s room, shutting the door was like a cue for Ichigo and Rukia to move again. “We’ll argue this out in the morning.” Ichigo grumbled, bedding down on the futon and leaving her the cot that had replaced his wrecked bed.

With a sigh, Rukia slid into the cot. It looked like one of the beds they had in the Fourth Division or in Ukitake-taichou’s sick room, and it was strange to reach out and not feel the floor next to her. Closing her eyes, she just hoped she could sleep with all the unfamiliar sounds.

And not fall off of the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels clunky, but I don't want to rehash EVERYTHING. I'd rather focus on Ichigo be 'properly' taught and Rukia's 'culture shock' reactions. I'm figuring there's a lag of at least seventy years for even smaller culture changes to hit Soul Society. And that Kubo could have gone farther than Rukia's bafflement over the juice box. I mean, even if she grew up not passing up any food no matter how strange, I'm sure some of the foods today would get a reaction, if only because of the implication of how 'traditional' Japanese what we see of Seireitei and Soul Society.
> 
> And does anyone know if there's any kidou that would generate water, or is that water Zanpakutou only? I want to have Isshin argue for starting large with Ichigo and kidou, and I really, REALLY want to flood Urahara's training lair...


	5. Chapter 5

_It was a city on its side, blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds. Looking to his right, he saw two figures._

_One was dressed in a billowing black coat with a ragged hem, shoulder length dark brown hair whipping in his face in a wind he couldn’t feel, obscuring a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He was perched on an empty flag pole, impossibly balanced on the very end._

_The other…he looked like he had been dumped into white paint, clothes and all, at first look. Then he picked out the black lining the white shihakushou, the black sash, and the black tabi. The creepy part was the face. Beyond how it looked just like him, the gold irises on black sclera and the grin just this shy of ‘crazy’ reminded him of a Hollow._

_“**So you’ve made it here, and it’s only the second night.**” White-him remarked, clapping and giving off enough sarcasm to drown in._

_“_**Given how he felt us at his side today, are you truly surprised?**”_ Ossan inquired with raised eyebrow._

_“So I’ve got a spirit for each blade of my zanpakutou?” He asked, standing as he noticed the oudachi on the white spirit’s back and the koudachi at the right hip of the black spirit._

_“**Something like that. Your power’s patterned like a Shinigami, but half of it is decidedly not.**” White-him, or rather, Hollow-him, answered._

_“Because I inherited both of you from Mom? The Hollow sealed in her soul and her Quincy power?” He questioned, looking between the two._

_“**Yup, Goat Face released my seal, otherwise you’d only have this guy for company.”**_

_He looked at Ossan. “Not a talker?”_

_“_ **I do believe my…’partner’…does more than enough speaking for both of us.** _” Ossan said drily, conveying his distaste without changing his expression._

_Hollow-him flipped him off, but Ossan didn’t care. “So what’s this about having me pick? What you said last night?” He asked, walking closer and crossing his arms._

_Looking down briefly, he saw he was in the black shihakushou, his right arm wearing an archer’s glove._

_“_ **There’s a difference of opinion in approach between us, so…** _”_

_“**…while we’ve agreed to work together for now, our outlooks differ too much for that to work for long.**”_

_He frowned. He didn’t like this talk of ‘choosing’. It was like someone was asking him to choose which sister to save._

_He opened his mouth, ready to explain that, and—_

* * *

Some kind of alarm jolted Rukia out of her doze, having not managed any deeper sleep. Tired, she rolled over to get up—

“GAH!!” Shrieking, she grabbed the side of the cot she was in, now wide awake.

Ichigo stuck his head out of the futon. Eyeing how she clung to the cot, half in and half out, he asked, “Never slept in a cot like that before?”

“Just once, and the Fourth Division had sedated me.” She answered, finally deciding to let herself drop onto the floor.

“Zanpakutou spirits are a part of you, right?” He asked, sitting up. “So not accepting it would be like not accepting yourself?”

“Something like that. The zanpakutou spirit represents every aspect of their Shinigami wielder, including the aspects you don’t know about or want to acknowledge. You’ve seen them?” She asked as he wandered into the bathroom, with his clothes.

Once he double-checked that, yes, this was Sunday.

“Yeah. They seem to think I need to choose one of them.” He answered with a frown.

Frowning herself, Rukia went to borrow one of Yuzu’s dresses for the day.

* * *

Going off of Rukia’s face as she ate her bacon and eggs, there was a new person converted to the side of Bacon. “Is every strange food here this good?!” She exclaimed, coming close to her faux schoolgirl voice without trying.

“I’ll need to bug Chad for some of his Mexican-style food.” Ichigo commented.

“Right, so Kisuke has an underground training lair beneath his shop that everyone can use.” Isshin opened. “Rukia-chan can get you there. I have to stay here while Tessai finishes setting up the new permanent shield and for the contractor to arrive. I called Ryuuken, he said to call him back when you kids can draw the standard bow and hit the center seven times out of ten.”

“There’s no archery club at the elementary school, but Mashiba Middle School does have one.” Yuzu said, having checked. “Same thing with kendo.”

“That new shield better work.” Karin threatened. “Cuz it’s your butt I’ll be coming after.”

* * *

Yuzu and Karin trailed behind Ichigo and Rukia as they headed to the shop owned by the weird guy who turned up the night before last. “You know it makes sense that Mom and Dad both had some kind of powers, if all of us could at least feel ghosts.” Yuzu commented.

“I wonder if we would have learned any of it if Mom had lived.” Karin questioned, rolling her eyes as Ichigo and Rukia argued over sleeping arrangements.

There was an unspoken agreement that it might be better for Rukia to sleep in Ichigo’s room in cause of Hollow alarms. What they were arguing over was why she was in his closet last night and who would sleep on the floor. “I’m USED to sleeping on the floor; you saw how I almost fell out of that stupid bed!” Rukia pointed out.

“I don’t care at this point, just don’t sleep in my closet.” Ichigo conceded, fed up with the argument.

“But how can you sleep through all that noise at night?” Rukia asked.

The Kurosaki children exchanged confused looks. “What noise?” Yuzu asked.

“I don’t know what all of it was, but like the cars on the road outside and the creaking and the bangs.” Rukia listed off a couple of the noises that had kept her up the night before.

“The creaking is the house settling and the bangs are from the heating and ventilation system.” Karin explained. “For the cars we’re just used to it I guess.”

“Everything’s so much noisier…” Rukia noted, looking around them at the bustle of Sunday morning.

“Dad said Seireitei was like being in Tokugawa Japan, so I guess all this automation and machinery wouldn’t be around.” Ichigo waved his hand at the town.

“The Fourth Division and the Twelfth Division are the ones with the most machinery and human type equipment, and there is a printing press run by the Ninth Division, with a subsection for the Academy.” Rukia commented. “I only stumbled across my sketch pad and marker when I found them in a box of other supplies in the Thirteenth.”

Craning her neck at the distant roar, Rukia’s eyes widened at unfamiliar shape that passed overhead. “What is that?”

“Airplane. Some of the approach routes for Tokyo International bring them over Karakura.” Ichigo explained, tugging Rukia along since she had stopped in the middle of the road. “Do they not teach about the World of the Living or something?”

“Not…really. There are a few Shinigami who remember their human lives, but most Shinigami were either born in Soul Society or arrived as babies or small children. In Rukongai, the area outside Seireitei, people don’t usually talk about the World of the Living. It’s just where they’ll go when they die in Soul Society. The higher the District number, the worse the living conditions, so survival matters more than your life before. Humans usually can’t see us, so there’s not a reason to learn much.” Rukia shrugged. “I’m sure there’s the oddball who learns more on their own. I was adopted into one of the Four Noble Families of Seireitei, the Kuchiki, so it would be unseemly to show an active interest in the Human World.”

“That doesn’t sound fun.” Yuzu complained with a frown.

“I don’t think there’s any nobility in existence that knows the word ‘fun’.” Ichigo told her.

“The Shiba clan does, but they’re only nobles by the barest definition of the word.” Rukia countered half-heartedly.

“Still…I’d think the discouragement towards learning about the World of the Living could just make the urge to learn about it that much stronger.” Karin commented.

“I suppose…” Rukia agreed. “But I guess you’ll just have to show me everything you can while I’m in the gigai.”

“Have you seen movies before?” Yuzu asked eagerly.

Rukia furrowed her brow. “…moving pictures, right? One of my training runs when I first joined my Division was to a…movie set? They had rebuilt the old Rashomon gate for whatever story they were telling.”

“Sounds like you were on the set of Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon. It’s pretty good.” Ichigo remarked.

“What’s it about?” Rukia asked.

“A samurai is murdered, and a woodcutter, a bandit, the samurai’s wife, and the samurai himself in an itoko each tell a different version of events. About the only part everyone agrees on is that the samurai was killed. So you don’t really know what really happened.” Ichigo related.

“So what’s the point if you don’t really know what actually happened?” Rukia asked.

“To make you think. And to entertain.”

“Well tonight’s movie night and it’s my turn to pick, so I’m picking Jurassic Park.” Karin reminded Ichigo.

“We saw that the last time it was your turn last time!” Ichigo complained.

“Don’t act like you don’t like it too Ichi-nii.”

“Jurassic Park?” Rukia was baffled. “What is a ‘Jurassic’?”

“Do you know what dinosaurs are?” Yuzu asked.

Still confused, Rukia shook her head. “This Soul Society place isn’t sounding so great. First no bacon, and now no one knows about dinosaurs?” Karin complained.

“I’m sure someone does! Just…not anyone I know of.” Rukia defended weakly.

“Once we’re done with Hat’n’Clogs and get home you can regale Rukia about dinosaurs as much as you want.” Ichigo told Karin as Rukia led them into a store marked ‘Urahara Shouten’.

* * *

“CAN’T YOU PEOPLE WARN ME BEFORE YOU SHOVE ME OUTTA MY BODY?!?!” Ichigo roared, hauling his body to one side of Hat’n’Clogs logic-defying training…lair. “How big is this place?”

“Big.” Hat’n’Clogs said unhelpfully, ignoring the part about warning Ichigo before pushing him out of his body.

“Still…we have to come and bother you if we want to use it…” Yuzu said with a frown. “Is there any way we can get something similar Urahara-san?” She peered up at him, wide-eyed and pouting.

Urahara had no defense against Yuzu’s puppy-eyed look. “Tessai-san can create a doorway that connects your house to here. And not let anyone in if there’s dangerous stuff flying around!” He quickly assured her when she added the lip tremble.

Ichigo and Karin shared an evil-eyed look. Sucker.

“Now, no one I know knows archery, but I’ve been watching YouTube since the wee hours of the morning, so I think I’ve got the hang of it!” Urahara exclaimed, leading them over to the make-shift shooting range.

“…No offense, but I think I’ll ask the archery club at school tomorrow for help…” Ichigo declined, not trusting the man’s ability to learn through YouTube to teach him, let alone his sisters. “Maybe sword work instead?”

Urahara drooped a little, before straightening, “Kuchiki-chan, if you could walk Karin-chan and Yuzu-chan through the basics while I spar a bit with Kurosaki-kun to see where to start?”

* * *

“Hat’n’Clogs is evil.” Was the first thing out of Ichigo’s mouth when the group returned home in the afternoon. “I mean, I know I’ll probably have to fight other Shinigami who’ll be trying to kill me, but he could have waited until the next time for that!” He complained as he flopped on the sofa.

“Just be glad Urahara had a healing hot spring. I can scarcely call up a ball of reiatsu.” Rukia sat on top of his legs.

“Huh…Kisuke said he was starting with archery today…” Isshin commented.

“He said he’d been watching YouTube for hours to ‘get the hang of it’.” Karin said flatly. “Ichi-nii invoked big brother privilege, so Rukia-nee worked with me and Yuzu on the basics of kendo while Hat’n’Clogs beat up Ichi-nii.”

“I KNOW I got him a couple times, but he didn’t react!” Ichigo protested, shifting enough to knock Rukia to the floor.

“He was Onmitsukido before he became the Captain of the Twelfth Division, so between how they’re trained to take a pounding and having enough control over his reiatsu to act like armor…” Isshin explained as Rukia wedged herself between Ichigo’s legs and the back of the sofa.

“Urahara-san said he would have Tessai-san put in a doorway so we could use his training lair without having to bother him all the time!” Yuzu exclaimed excitedly as she went to the kitchen to decide what to make for dinner.

“…’The Look’?” Isshin whispered.

“’The Look’.” Ichigo and Karin confirmed. Rukia, taking in the almost ominous way they were talking, decided it was safer not to ask.

* * *

Watching Rukia watch Jurassic Park proved to be nearly as entertaining as the movie itself. “…how can they-?” She asked as the man and woman from the ‘dig site’ stared up at what was the strangest creature she had ever seen: impossibly huge with obscenely long neck and tail. “That’s a dinosaur?”

“One kind.” Karin replied.

“So if these dinosaurs died a really long time ago, how could they do a movie with them in it?” Rukia asked as the tour group reached what seemed to be the main building. “Wait, I’ll just write my questions down.”

Rukia wrote furiously through several scenes, until the goat leg landed on the roof of one of the cars. Setting her pen down, she forgot what she had questions about as a ‘T. rex’ broke through the cables that normally held electricity to keep it in, jumping as it roared. “They live, right?!” She demanded as the men from the other car tried using glowing red sticks.

“Well…” Isshin trailed off, letting the movie answer her question as the coward who left the children alone met his demise.

Rukia reacting to all the scares made Yuzu and Karin jump as well, despite knowing they were coming. Having to read everything to understand what was happening was a little annoying, but she doubted if it would be the same if the English voices were replaced with Japanese ones.

“Wait they just leave?!” She exclaimed as the ‘helicopter’ flew away. “What about the dinosaurs? What happens to them?”

“They’re just left to fend for themselves I guess.” Ichigo replied.

“That’s not satisfying at all! Does no one go back for the bodies?!” Rukia asked. “I mean, if they weren’t eaten…”

“That’s left up for the viewer to decide. The story was about using new technology and science without considering the consequences, so the ‘after’ doesn’t matter.” Isshin explained, having gone and read the original book after he had seen Jurassic Park the first time.

“I just hope the Twelfth Division never sees this…they’ll take it as a challenge…” Rukia prayed. “But where were humans when dinosaurs lived?”

“Humans hadn’t evolved yet.” Ichigo answered.

“’Evolved’?” Rukia repeated with a frown. “Like evolving from Shikai to Bankai?”

“Not quite.” Isshin fielded the question. “From one generation to the next, the animals that survive long enough to produce the generation after them are the ones with the traits best suited to survival. Over millions of years, you can end up with a completely new animal in the end.”

“The closest thing to dinosaurs today are birds.” Karin told her.

Rukia felt like her brain broke with this tidbit. “Wait you’re saying that the pigeons on the power lines are the closest thing to dinosaurs that exists today?!”

“Not the big huge sauropods, but dinosaurs like the T. rex and Velociraptors…”

* * *

Isshin read the latest medical journal Ryuuken had forwarded to the clinic. Learning to at least read English had been a long and frustrating process, but reading about new medical advancements made the frustration worth it.

All the young people were in bed, and he was taking a bit of time to himself as he read. Feeling Karin moving, he looked up to see her at the foot of the stairs. “Karin?” He asked as she walked over to join him on the sofa.

She didn’t say anything when he wrapped an arm around her, which was vaguely concerning. “Did one of those Hollows get Mom?” She finally asked. “Ichi-nii had said a monster got her once.”

“…most likely.” He carefully answered. “What happened that kept her from using her power none of us know.”

“Have you ever regretted it?” She asked. “Giving up your powers and whatever family and friends you had in Soul Society?”

“The only time I’ve regretted it was the day Mom died.” He answered. “Family was just my niece and nephew, and they could handle themselves. Friends… I’ve wondered how they’re doing, but I would have regretted it more if I had let Masaki die when I could have done something about it. My niece and nephew, and my friends would understand that. Not that Kukaku won’t beat me up when she sees me again…”

Karin’s lips quirked up briefly as she pictured someone else beating up her father like Ichi-nii did, even as her hand fisted in the back of his shirt.

“Karin. I’m not going back to Soul Society until you and Yuzu and Ichigo have all gone on there before me.” Isshin told her, thinking that that might be at the root of all this. “I’ll go back there to visit, especially if Rukia gets in trouble for giving Ichigo her powers, but I’m not leaving Karakura and the World of the Living until all three of you have died. You aren’t getting rid of me _that_ easily.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have you to mock every day.” Karin declared, leaning in to Isshin’s body heat briefly before she shook off his arm. “…good night…”

“Good night Karin.” He returned as Karin went back to bed.

He would never vote himself Father of the Year, but moments like what had just past…

…made him feel like he would be able to hold his head high and look Masaki in the eye if—_when_—he saw her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I had a sleepover for my sixteenth birthday, my one friend Marie freaked me out asking about all the noises of the house, since her house was a lot newer and didn't make all the creaking and groaning my house did. Then she was weirded out when my dad came out to the living room to make sure we were warm enough (December baby here).  
I like to think that even if none of the kids will confide in Isshin, they would at least go to him for some reassurance if they needed it. Might be me projecting, since I get along great with my parents (shrug).
> 
> Might be me and my weird head, but I could see Urahara watching YouTube for hours to learn something.


	6. Chapter 6

“Well Kisuke you shouldn’t have said you learned by watching YouTube.” Isshin told him, unsympathetic.

Kisuke had come over with Shinji and Hachi after the kids left for school, so Hachi could add his touch to Tessai’s new barrier and hopefully make it even harder to break.

Plus add the remote door to the training lair that Yuzu had requested.

Kisuke was still moody about how Ichigo refused to let him show off what he was calling his ‘hard earned archery prowess’. “Teenagers are so contrary…is this what I have to look forward to with Jinta and Ururu?” He whined. _I thought I’d miss the worst of it by making Jinta and Ururu as school age children instead of babies!_

“So your boy’s a Shinigami now? And you’re getting your powers back?” Shinji repeated. “What ‘bout that Hollow you were binding?”

“No signs so far, beyond Ichigo’s power feeling more like the mix it actually is.” Isshin waited for Shinji to raise his cup of tea to his mouth. “And his zanpakutou has split into two swords.”

Shinji choked on his tea. “What the—“ Coughing violently, he only just managed to not drop the cup. “Doesn’t that make him only like the third person EVER to have a dual zanpakutou?!”

“Out of everyone who’s reached Shikai. And he can already feel their spirits.” Isshin added. “He hasn’t described them, but more than likely the Hollow is one of them.”

“So we just watch and wait? See if it starts fighting for control?” Shinji sighed. “Hiyori’s gonna get pissy.”

“When isn’t she pissy?” Isshin asked, moving to unlock the clinic for the day.

“Good point.”

* * *

Uryuu forced down his sigh when the Shinigami who just HAD to be in his class intruded into the archery club domain. While he hadn’t officially joined, he had agreed to be available for tournaments in exchange for access to the targets. With half an ear he listened as the orange-haired shinigami, Kurosaki, spun some lie about his ‘sisters’ wanting to get into archery. More like the shinigami training him wants him to learn how to counter archery. The girl, Kuchiki, was ‘absorbed’ in an English study book.

Put off from his practice, Uryuu quickly left before his services could be ‘volunteered’ to train his mortal enemy how to fight him.

It was bad enough to have to constantly feel him flaunting his power every school day. _Doesn’t that jackass know control?!_

* * *

Ichigo, Rukia, and the archery club captain Tsukishiro looked up as the door slid shut with a bang. “Huh…wonder what’s got Ishida worked up?” Tsukishiro commented.

“Normally he’s so focused.”

“So is he your best member?” Rukia asked.

“Well he’s not a proper member of the club, but he’s apparently been practicing for years, so he’s agreed to help us out in tournaments in exchange for the practice space. I would ask him if he minded teaching you the basics, but with whatever’s got him worked up and how he’s left-handed…” Trailing off, Tsukishiro just shrugged. “Anyway, the main thing is to make sure the form is correct; bow rebound hurts like a bitch…”

* * *

“This English is really complicated.” Rukia commented as they left school for the day. “For every rule there’s an exception to it.”

“Yeah, I heard somewhere that English attacks other languages in dark alleys and raids the pockets for loose grammar and vocabulary.” Ichigo replied.

For some reason Rukia could only picture Kiyone-san and Sentaro-san blindsiding her and getting her to agree to something. “So where are we going? This isn’t the way back to the clinic.” She asked.

“Yuzu and Karin are taking you shopping for some things of your own. They’re thinking you’d be more comfortable if you didn’t need to always borrow from Yuzu, since we don’t know how long it’ll take for you to get your power back.” He answered.

He only went a few steps before he noticed Rukia wasn’t in step with him. Looking back, he saw that she was standing there with a stunned expression. “What’s with that look?” He asked.

She jumped for some reason. “Nothing!” She denied, jogging to catch up to him. “But I don’t have any human money…”

“Don’t worry about.” He said. “You do realize that Goat Face has pretty much adopted you as another daughter, right? He’ll be bragging to Mom’s poster all about ‘their’ beautiful new daughter who’s giving the twins a good female role model before long. And telling me not to make him a grandfather yet.”

His hand lashed out to grab her as she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. “You shouldn’t try to walk and read at the same time.” He commented, choosing to ignore how the book in her hand was closed and how she still had that shocked look on her face.

* * *

Yuzu and Karin were waiting in front of a small shop. “What took you so long?” Karin complained. “We’ve been waiting like fifteen minutes.”

“I was talking to the archery club captain, remember?” Ichigo reminded her. “Got what Goat Face gave you?”

“Yup!” Yuzu confirmed. “You’re not going to say hi to Nadeshiko-san?”

Flushing, Ichigo just plopped down on the bench outside the shop. “Gimme your bags.” He ordered, holding out his hand for the girls’ school bags.

Blinking, Rukia was confused by Ichigo’s reluctance…

…until the door opened.

While the display windows facing the street had tasteful presentations of seasonal styles, inside…

Rukia didn’t even know that much lace even existed. And she had no clue whatsoever as to the point of the…garments…displayed on mockups nearly as buxom as the Tenth Division Matsumoto-fukutaichou. The lower half she recognized, having borrowed some from Yuzu, but the top…

No wonder Ichigo had turned red.

“Welcome!!!” A cheerful woman dressed in almost as much lace greeted them. “Yuzu-chan! Karin-chan! Where’s Ichi-chan?!”

“Outside. You know how he is since he started high school.” Karin replied flatly.

“Oh my! You’re like a delicate porcelain doll!” The woman exclaimed as she grasped Rukia’s hands.

“Uh…thank you?” Rukia tentatively replied, even as she felt her face growing hot. _Hadn’t those noble ladies said I was a particularly rough example of the Rukongai slums? At that dinner soon after my adoption? Though I don’t recall those ladies ever being invited back…_

“This is Rukia-nee. She’s staying with us for a while, but since her family’s VERY traditional, she’s been borrowing from Yuzu.” Karin explained. “So she needs fitted out.”

“…is the lace required?” Rukia felt compelled to ask.

“Nope! Not unless you like feeling sexy underneath!” The woman ‘assured’ her, in a way that did not leave Rukia feeling assured in anyway. “Anyway, I’m Nadeshiko!”

Vaguely boxed in with Nadeshiko-san behind her with hands on her shoulders and the Kurosaki girls on each side, Rukia was ushered towards one of the back corners, which had little nooks walled off. “Now, since you’ve been raised traditional, first we need to measure you for present-day sizing. So…”

What followed was superficially similar to the formal kimono fittings she had experienced.

Superficially, because not only was there a constant stream of chatter between the three, she was asked her opinion, not lectured on appropriate colors. “Wait, so…I can have anything I want on panties?” Rukia finally cut in.

“Yup! I keep the basics in stock, but if you can picture it, I can make it happen!” Nadeshiko-san confirmed.

Rukia perked up, hopeful. “Have you…heard of Chappy?”

* * *

Ichigo, deep inside an English copy of Murder on the Orient Express, was pulled out of his mental translating by a very loud, very girlish squeal. “…guess they got to the part about ‘anything you want’…”

With a mental and literal shrug, he went back to his book.

* * *

Rukia was almost literally sparkling when they were done half an eternity later (also called five chapters later). When Nadeshiko-san buried Ichigo’s face in her chest when she hugged him, Rukia understood his reluctance for going into the store.

“Nadeshiko-san went to school with Mom, and as we got older, Dad tapped her for help with stuff you’d usually have a mom for.” Yuzu explained as they walked home.

“How that man can deliver babies yet not handle giving his daughters The Talk and all the other girly stuff I’ll never know.” Karin remarked.

“’The Talk’?” Rukia repeated.

“What all those lovers in the tales are actually doing when they’re supposedly ‘talking’ all night.” Ichigo chimed in, face back to its normal coloring.

He could tell when the metaphorical light bulb went off in her head, since she went rigid. “Oh.” She commented. “Isshin-taichou’s delivered babies?”

“Right, that used to be females only…the clinic’s averaged at least one birth every year, counting us. Dad ended up getting certified as an obstetrician and is on call sometimes at the hospital for that. No clue how that happened.” Ichigo explained.

“Is it safer? With his kind of doctor around?” Rukia asked. She knew that Nii-sama was under some pressure to take another wife so there would be a trueblood heir, even if her adoption papers had specified that she had all the rights and privileges of a trueblood daughter of the house.

She wondered why he had adopted her as a sister and not as a daughter, but she didn’t question it. Even if part of her was sure that it was so he could avoid the question of ‘what if’.

“When I was putting out the latest pamphlets for Dad, it said Japan has a maternal mortality rate of five deaths per one thousand births, which is really good.” Yuzu said.

Rukia’s eyes widened. “I’m not sure what it is in Seireitei or Rukongai, but everyone gets really anxious when there’s due to be a birth. Although that might have more to do with how the power differences between mother and child add in an additional danger.”

“What do you mean?” Karin asked.

“I don’t know a lot, but if there’s a huge difference in power between father and mother, it’s more likely for there to be complications. Especially if the mother is the one on the lower end of the scale. It might be because of how the mother’s power nourishes the baby’s budding power, but I don’t know if anyone truly knows.” Rukia elaborated.

“So when a person dies in Soul Society, they’re reborn on Earth, but when a person dies on Earth, they just appear in Soul Society?” Yuzu said with a frown, after the detour for dinner ingredients. “Wouldn’t it make more sense of the cycle of reincarnation went both ways?”

“Maybe…” Rukia agreed. “I don’t think that’s something that’s thought about very much.”

* * *

“So,” Isshin started off, having directed the kids through the special portal connecting to Urahara’s training room. “The first step to kido is channeling and condensing your reiryoku.” Holding up a hand, a glowing ball of light appeared above his palm. “From what I’ve bugged out of Ryuuken, Masaki’s cousin, Quincy primarily use ambient reishi in the environment, while Shinigami, as well as other kido users, use our own internal reiryoku. A common analogy for something basic like this is to picture a circle, and then to ‘color’ in the circle as dark as you can make it. Now, Ichigo,” He clapped his hands. “It’d likely be best if we have some distance between you and everyone else, since currently you have the poorest control. Property damage is a routine consequence from an exercise like this.”

“In or out?” Ichigo asked as Rukia pulled out the glove she used to shove him out of his body.

“In.”

Ichigo walked several yards away, holding his right hand out palm up. _Picture a circle…then color it in as dark as I can…_

** _He—n—y—_ **

Keeping his eyes on his palm, Ichigo turned his focus to the sense of power he had felt since Rukia stabbed him with her zanpakutou. There was something that reminded him of ice and snow ghosting across what he’d best call the ‘surface’, but underneath…

It brought to mind a razor sharp edge, over top a swirling mass of dark instincts. Waiting, in that breath between thought and action, the split second before drawing the sword.

Before loosening the arrow.

Before connecting with an impossibly sharp blow that will kill.

There was the impression of a shape, of an arc like the gleam of the blade of a sword or the crescent moon.

Realizing that he was stalling, he took a breath, and as he let it out, he touched the edge, mindful of how, if he ever lost respect for that impossible sharpness, it would kill him.

Drawing out a gossamer thin arrow, he turned to the mental circle over his palm, and shoved the arrow into the center.

Red-edged blackness flowed from the arrow point. Narrowing his eyes, he ran it along the edge of the circle, setting the boundary with the red as he painted the center blacker than night.

As sure as he could be that the boundary would hold, the world outside himself filtered back in.

He was sweaty and felt like he had sprinted for over a mile, but the sense of stunned silence from Hollow/White-him (he hadn’t decided on a nickname yet) made him grin.

He also realized that while setting the boundaries of his glowing orb had taken focus, it seemed like maintaining those boundaries and the integrity of the orb was almost mindless in the amount of effort.

Moving his hand, he noticed how the orb moved with it, and he remembered that Goat Face hadn’t said what he was supposed to do after he had made his orb.

The sensible part of him said to puncture the orb and draw the power back in.

The sensible part was promptly and violently overruled by the rest of him, which was wondering what would happen if he pressed it against a rock.

And if he could throw it.

Quickly looking over his shoulder to make sure the others were far enough away, he turned to the largest rock formation near him. Pulling his arm back, he mentally ripped the spider-silk thin he now noticed connected the orb to his palm as he proceeded to throw the orb like a baseball.

* * *

Kisuke had just sat down with some tea and the dinner Tessai had saved for him when the trapdoor leading down to his training area shuddered violently.

His locked and bolted shut trapdoor.

Eyeing the door much as one would eye a snake, something told him that Kurosaki-kun was destroying his training area in revenge for Kisuke ‘trying’ to kill him the day before.

The boy was too green to realize that if he had been actually trying to kill him, he’d be dead ten times over.

“What the hell did Isshin start with?” He muttered to himself, turning back to his dinner before it got any colder.

* * *

Isshin, Rukia, Karin, and Yuzu all jumped at the explosion, ducking down as Ichigo flew over their heads. Hearing a vaguely worrying thud, they ran over to where Ichigo landed.

Rukia did her level best not to laugh when she saw Ichigo, looking like Renji did when his chantless Shakkahou blew up in his face. “Ow.” Ichigo said, getting the sense of exasperation from his ‘shoulder ghosts’ as he felt the narrow cushion of power that had caught him dissipate away.

This bland statement, combined with his appearance, made Rukia’s efforts for naught.

“Just because I said property damage was a routine consequence of this didn’t mean for you to take that as a challenge.” Isshin said as he examined Ichigo with none of his usual detachment.

“I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw it.” Ichigo defended, rather weakly.

“Normally with a basic ball like that, it should just lose cohesion the moment you stopped maintaining the shape.” Isshin explained, since Rukia was trying to recover from her laughing. “But of course you managed to actually make an attack out of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will never be sorry...


	7. Chapter 7

Rukia examined the small, rectangular box containing ‘apple juice’. Yuzu, not used to flexing her spiritual muscles, had overslept this morning, and so lunch had to be purchased from the cantina/cafeteria today.

She would figure this out damnit.

“Hello Kuchiki-san!” A boy with black hair chirped, holding his own food.

Crap, what was his name? “Hello…Kojima-kun?” She hazarded a guess.

She guessed right, based on how he beamed at her. “Yup! I’m Kojima Mizuiro, and—“

“He’s a playboy.” Ichigo said flatly, cutting in. “So watch yourself.”

“Now you know I only go for older women. Girls our age are safe.” Kojima-kun protested, sitting down next to Ichigo.

“Like I said, watch yourself.”

Rukia frowned a little. Even if by count of years she was older, she wasn’t based on appearance, since she was able to fit into the student body without much trouble.

_How much older does he mean?_ She wondered, suddenly picturing Kojima-kun with the elderly lady who always smiled at Ichigo on the walk to school.

No one noticed her gag as one of the other boys who hung around Ichigo came over. “Wow! Ichigo got the cute transfer student to eat with us?!” He exclaimed. “Let’s party it up!”

“A party with milk, juice, bread, and noodles?” Ichigo questioned, sticking a clear tube through a silvery circle on what she guessed was the top of the box and sucking on it, drawing out the juice.

She had disregarded the tube before, but now that she was seeing an example in action, she was quickly mimicking Ichigo’s actions.

_It DOES taste like apple!_

Ichigo was the only one who noticed how Rukia’s eyes widened on her first sip. “So how’d you pull this off Ichigo? Teach me!” Keigo pleaded.

“For some reason the school has my old man listed as willing to board students, so she’s staying at my place.” Ichigo rolled his eyes. Despite a lifetime of watching how seriously Isshin took his job, it was still weird to think of him as someone people would trust outside that context. “Anyway, have you seen Chad yet?”

Keigo shook his head. “No. He’s never been this late before.”

Ichigo turned his sense of people out, feeling for Chad. He felt sort of close, not as close as Tatsuki (on the other end of the roof with Inoue), but maybe at least school grounds?

Just then Chad appeared, bandaged and carrying a bird cage with a parakeet inside. “What happened?” Ichigo asked, concerned since Chad definitely did not have those injuries yesterday.

“…An I-beam fell on me last night.” Chad stated, completely ignoring how Keigo flailed. “And this morning a motorcycle ran into me. I carried the rider to the hospital.”

“YOU need the hospital.” Ichigo pointed out, even though he knew it was useless.

Despite how he was larger than the average Japanese man, Chad was surprisingly good at not being noticed. This wasn’t even the third time Chad had a motorcycle run into him. “At least come over to the clinic after school and let Dad take another look.” Ichigo said.

“Woah! It talks like a person!” Keigo exclaimed, having been examining the parakeet. “Where you’d get such a smart bird?”

“…a guy gave him to me.”

“No! You’re totally leaving out half the story!” Keigo complained as Ichigo turned his attention to the bird.

He could almost make out the outline of a small boy inside.

“Probably just another lonely ghost.” Rukia commented. “We can perform konsou tonight.”

“What ‘we’?” Ichigo muttered, getting the feeling that Ossan, on his left, had kicked Hollow-him (on his right) for something.

** _Li—el—bait!_ **

**Not t—nt.**

He’d have to ask Rukia and Goat Face if their zanpakutou spirits were this active, and if it was normal.

Even if his gut told him that it wasn’t.

* * *

Ichigo and Rukia got home at the same time as car crash victims started trickling in. “I’m telling you four cars!!! They need more than my first aid level of attention!!!” Ichigo overheard Isshin yelling on the phone as he and Rukia helped direct people to beds. “Tell your director Kurosaki is asking and you’ll find some free beds!!”

Isshin savagely pressed the end call button, missing the corded phones that he could slam down. Eyebrow twitching, he forced himself to take a few deep breaths. _I forgot how fiery your temper is._ Engetsu whispered.

Your fault. Isshin replied as he went to his patients. “Ichigo, Rukia-chan, start taking names and other basic info. See if they need or want to contact anyone.” He ordered gruffly, turning to scrub up. “Yuzu, start on the least injured. Karin, direct anymore incoming.” Casting an experienced eye over the beds, Isshin went to work.

* * *

It was after the ambulances had picked up the seriously injured victims (a middle-aged man with a cracked sternum, a young woman with a concussion, and a middle-school student who nearly lost an eye to flying glass from the store front window that had been wrecked in the crash) and the other victims almost done (barring one cast that was setting) that Ichigo realized that Chad felt awfully close.

Meaning that he wasn’t surprised when Karin staggered in with him, the bird cage still in hand. “What happened?!” He asked, quickly relieving Karin and getting Chad to a stool.

The wound on Chad’s back made his blood run cold. “Goat Face! One more patient!” Ichigo yelled, sharing a look with Rukia as she cleaned up the debris of the last hour.

The look on Isshin’s face when he saw the mark on Chad’s back banished any lingering doubts. A faint green glow surrounded his right hand, and he started tracing the edges of the mark, holding tweezers and a cotton swab as a decoy. Ichigo made a mental note to ask Isshin later about what he was doing. “Hey—“ Isshin cried as Chad stood up suddenly.

“I’m—“ Chad didn’t even finish before he fell flat on his face.

Exchanging a look, Ichigo and Isshin picked up Chad and got him into a bed. “His parakeet has a boy in it.” Ichigo commented quietly. “I keep thinking that he’s bait.”

_ **Cuz h- is!** _

“Are zanpakutou always chatty?” Ichigo asked as he joined Rukia in cleaning up.

“To be frank, usually a Shinigami has to meditate and enter their inner world to speak to their zanpakutou.” Rukia told him. “Beyond that I guess it depends on the spirit. There’s…not a lot of discussion about zanpakutou spirits, even if for the captains and lieutenants the names and forms of their Shikai are common knowledge. I mean, records are kept, but…” Rukia trailed off.

Ichigo eyed her, not pushing. She did say she was adopted into a noble family; that would put a lot of people off from interacting with her. Never mind nobility privileges. “So what’s yours’ like?” He asked, which banished the slump in her form.

“She’s gorgeous! When my zanpakutou’s released every part is completely white; it’s an ice and snow type. As for the spirit…she’s has white hair and wears a white furisode. Her name’s—“ The words stuck in her mouth, making her frown. “I know her name…but I can’t say it.”

“It’s a quick way to gauge if your power’s returned, if you can say the name.” Isshin, finished treating the Hollow mark on Chad’s back, said. “The only way mine was able to reach me was because enough of your power leaked out of Ichigo to let him reach me. And to let me hear him. His name is Engetsu.” He added at Ichigo’s curious look. “Fire type. He’s a man wrapped in a cloak or coat of fire, like that one boss in Final Fantasy IV.”

“Wonder what that means for me, especially with my extras in the mix.” Ichigo wondered out loud.

_ **Like I’l—ssy-ass weak p—** _

**Element’s not—families—**

Frowning, Ichigo let the conversation drop off. Just how long before he’ll be able to hear them clearly? He knew Goat Face was counting on a fast growth rate, but as he remembered what the pair had said about choosing…

…he wasn’t sure how the pair would react to his refusal to do so.

* * *

_Ichigo flopped back onto one of the buildings of his ‘inner world’. Much like the night before, half the night was Ossan drilling him on archery, the other half was Hollow-him attacking him with his copy of the oudachi. Each hovered while the other was ‘teaching’, like they didn’t trust the other with him._

_How crazy was that? Parts of him not trusting other parts of him. “I’ve got a question, if you’re willing to answer.” He asked Hollow-him, who, after the end of the ‘lesson’, was amusing himself by attacking Ossan, only for Ossan to lean out of the way or go intangible._

_Ichigo had the feeling the goal was to knock Ossan off his flag pole._

_**“What kind of question?”** Hollow-him challenged, tensing._

_“Do you remember anything from before…?” Ichigo waved his hand, gesturing at his inner world. “Before you were sealed.”_

Before you were a Hollow.

_Faster than a blink of the eye, Hollow-him had him pinned, oudachi resting against his throat, cold fury pushing out the crazy. “**Why the fuck you wanna know?”**_

_Heart in his throat, Ichigo pressed on. “Goat Face said you fought like a Shinigami, so I was wondering if you remembered any kido.”_

_The fury was pushed away by confusion. **“Why?”** Hollow-him questioned. “**When you pick me, then you’ll have to fight me for control. Especially if you want Bankai. So why ask that if it means I could beat you?”**_

_The blade was still resting on his throat, but Ichigo felt his heart leave his throat. “I thought the whole point was to get stronger? Kido gives both of us an edge, even if I have to beat any kido you remember out of you.” His brown-on-white eyes never left the gold-on-black pair above him. “You’ve been a part of me since before I was born, which as far as I’m concerned means you’re still me. But I’m not going to ignore your existence from before. I’m sure Ossan is something similar.”_

_Ossan said nothing, but Ichigo still felt reluctant agreement._

_Hollow-him held his gaze for a long moment, and kept holding it as he pulled back. “**I don’t remember any kido.”** He said bluntly. “**Memories of before aren’t exactly something I care to dwell on. So if there are any kido hiding in there, chances are I’d only remember if they were used on one of my former selves.”**_

_He frowned as he sheathed the oudachi. **“I’ll check. But you’re only getting one for each time you draw blood. And I mean more than those paper cuts you’re so fond of.”**_

_He faded away. Standing, Ichigo looked over at Ossan, who was frowning more than usual. “_ **That was reckless.”**

_“Like you’re going to react any better if I ask you something about before you were part of me.” Ichigo retorted._

_He looked up at a sky filling with clouds. “Listen up; both of you. This is not a popularity contest, or a contest to convince me one of you isn’t to be trusted. The only way any of us will get stronger is by me accepting every part of myself. And that’s not going to happen if I cast one of you aside. So either work out your issues or I will make you.”_

_Ichigo closed his eyes. “Picking one or the other…it’s like asking me to choose between Yuzu or Karin. Not. Happening.”_

_So far he’d only been able to leave his inner world by waking up, but now?_

_Standing at the edge of the building, he let himself fall off, to wherever he went when he dreamed._

* * *

_Ossan just stared at where Ichigo had fallen off the building, not reacting when Hollow-Ichigo reappeared, not having truly left to start with it. “_**I suppose this was to be expected, with both of us presenting at the same time.”** _He remarked._

_Hollow-Ichigo snorted. **“Like that would have stopped him even if I appeared later.”** He sighed. “**Guess we get to explain the whole ‘Hollows are bad for Quincy’ thing again tomorrow night.”**_

**“…why would you only remember a kido if it was used on one of your former selves?”**

_Hollow-Ichigo gaped at Ossan, before pulling himself together. “**…you know that Hollows are despair and rage and desperation. In theory, I could remember good and bad memories, from all the Shinigami used to create me. But in truth…”**_

_He smiled, bitter and brittle. “**The one motherfucker had the idea of Hollows being stronger with only memories of negative emotions. So, with the same magic rock that turned them into Hollows to start with…he made sure of it.”**_

_He looked up at Ossan. “**He liked his kido a lot. He’d pr****actice casting without the chant, and feed the corpses of the weaker ones to the survivors.”**_

**“And you wonder why I wanted to avoid this life for him.”** _Ossan remarked._

_“**I don’t wonder. I just don’t agree. I know you’re not blind to fucking huge his potential is. It’d be a sin to squander it, no matter which path he walks.”**_

_Fading away again, Ossan could feel that he had dived into the dark depths of himself. Looking up at the sky, he was pleased to see the clouds had scattered._

_A Hollow, a Quincy, and a Shinigami walk into a soul…_

* * *

The next day is a blur, of Karin soul-sick from the boy in the parakeet, the boy who watched his mother be killed (just like Ichigo), Chad running and trying to protect them.  
Chad punching a monster he couldn’t see, some kind of instinct guiding him that let him connect more often than not.

With how sadistic the Hollow is, Rukia wasn’t surprised to learn it had been a serial murderer in life, or that he was dragged into Hell.

At least with Isshin-taichou a medical doctor, none of them would be in trouble for missing school that day, as Isshin-taichou took one look at her and vetoed any idea of her going to school, Chad was finally consenting to proper medical treatment for his back, and with Karin still recovering, neither Yuzu or Ichigo were leaving her side.

“Transfer student.” Rukia turned to look at Chad, whom she was sharing a small room with.

“Kuchiki Rukia.” She introduced herself properly.

“Sado Yasutora. Only ‘Sa’ is written with the kanji for tea.” Chad replied.

Sa-do.

Cha-do.

“Ichigo?” She asked, because that sounded like something Ichigo would do.

He nodded. “What was with that gesture?” She asked.

He blinked at her. “When the Gates to Hell appeared.” She elaborated, gesturing to her head, stomach, shoulders.

“…It’s the Sign of the Cross. Christian.”

“I don’t know what that is.” She admitted frankly.

“It’s a religion. My mother’s family was from Mexico, which is very Roman Catholic. The most traditional sect.” He added at her confused look. “I never put much stock, in Abuelo’s stories of hungry ghosts and the Gates appearing to drag sinners into Hell. But seeing that…reflex.” He shrugged.

“So is Roman Catholic like Buddhism?” She asked, shifting.

“Not really. There’s only one God. He heads the Trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three parts of a whole…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewatching the Bleach anime, and it’s only recently I realized that in the anime at least, his bedspread is blue with a white cross on it. 
> 
> I get the feeling there might be more Quincy hints if you know what to look for.
> 
> Another one that feels clunky, but I mustered up the will and inspiration to write it, so I'll live with it. Here's hoping everyone else does too.


	8. Chapter 8

Ichigo was glad Rukia didn’t use her memory thing on Chad. He could understand the reasoning behind its use, but he didn’t fully agree with it, especially with what happened between Inoue and her brother’s Hollow. But, as Chad hadn’t ‘seen’ him in the shihakushou, there was a loophole.

Either way, he hadn’t expected to walk into the room to find them debating Christianity versus Buddhism.

That night, hunched in the bath, he frowned as he realized his zanpakutou had been unusually quiet. There was still a sense of Ossan watching, but not of Hollow-him, beyond a faint thread. It was telling, just how quickly he had gotten used to both of their presences. With a sigh, Ichigo reluctantly left the bath, not putting it past Rukia or his sisters to intrude. “Even if they’re short, it would still be a tight fit…” He grumbled to himself, rubbing a towel over his hair.

* * *

_Only Ossan was there when he arrived in his Inner World. “_ **He has gone into the fragments of the past, looking for what you suggested.”** _ Ossan said before Ichigo could ask._

_He nodded slowly. “How long before I should start getting concerned?”_

_“_ **Perhaps by the end of the school week.”**

_Sitting down at the base of Ossan’s flagpole, Ichigo leaned back on his hands. There was an easy silence between them, but Ichigo still had his questions, even if he couldn’t put them into words._

**“A Quincy exposed to a Hollow’s power reacts much as natives did in the face of European diseases.” Ossan said suddenly. “Regular humans and Shinigami have some resistance to Hollows, but not the Quincy. Initially, that was all that marked out the Quincy from other spiritually aware humans.”**

_“Initially?”_

**“Present-day Quincy are all ‘descended’ from one man, pieces of his soul shared between all of them, returning to the main soul upon the Quincy’s death. They categorized themselves based on which lines had spiritual power independent of that shard, and which lines did not. In time, that distinction was forgotten, and so evolved into Echt, Pureblooded, Quincies, and Gemischt, Mixed, Quincies. With all the constraints of every society that puts a premium on ancestry.”**

_“So…that means you were a part of this Quincy Ancestor, right?” Ichigo asked. “So how did you go from that to being a part of my zanpakutou?”_

_Ossan was quiet for a long time, long enough that Ichigo didn’t expect an answer that night. “_**Both of us…”** _He finally spoke again. “_**Both of us want to protect you, but while he seeks to protect you through you becoming strong…I wanted to keep you weak. Weak enough that when the Quincy King moves against Soul Society…you would not be worth notice. Isshin’s reawakening of Engetsu broke the reishi strings that had bound the other until now. And with a proper asauchi to imprint on…”** _He fell quiet again._

_Ichigo turned this over in his head. Then he stood, turning to crane his neck to look up at Ossan. “I understand your reasoning, but I can’t agree to that.” He said firmly. “Even if I was weak enough to be safe from this Quincy King, that doesn’t mean I’d be safe from others. I’m sure my very existence, as the child of a Quincy and a Shinigami, is enough to incite murderous rage from someone somewhere, and having a Hollow as part of my zanpakutou certainly does me no favors.”_

_He held Ossan’s eyes as he continued. “Even if I could agree to your reasoning, I would never agree to it as long as there was the chance of danger to my sisters. It’s almost a miracle that I’ve gone as long as I have without having to fight that which is unseen. I will protect everyone that I can, and that means getting stronger. Because whomever created the Hollow that Dad and Mom fought and sealed in her soul is still out there, and if that person is twisted enough to make new Hollows on a whim, there’s no way my family will be safe from them.”_

_“_ **Believe me, I have seen no reason to question your resolve in this thus far. But my first priority will always be your safety.”** _ Ossan said. “_ **So I will teach you Quincy skills.”**

_“Whichever ones I can learn.” Ichigo added with a grimace. “I’m pretty sure my mixed heritage is enough to ensure that I have to try everything to find what works.”_

_“_ **Right now, the tendency is Shinigami, but that may only be because that is what you have been exposed to first.”** _ Ossan conceded. “_ **That may change.”**

_“Will my zanpakutou ever stop changing every time I leave my body?” Ichigo complained. Every single time Rukia pushed him out of his body, SOMETHING about one or both his zanpakutou was different. About the only constancy present was the tsuka ito colors on both. Black for Shinigami, white for Quincy._

**“Change is good.”**

_Ichigo just gave Ossan a dirty look out of the corner of his eye._

* * *

Rukia frowned down at the blank page. Her schedule mirrored Ichigo’s except for one class.

Art.

She couldn’t resist the chance to take an art class, especially one with more variety than the Yamato-e and sumi-e classes she had taken before. But she was struggling with what to draw for her present assignment.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

It’s not like she could draw herself (finally) getting promoted to maybe lieutenant, and she didn’t know enough about human jobs to draw herself in one of those. She hadn’t truly thought about the future, beyond a vague expectation of things continuing on as they had for decades.

Except…

It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility of her being married. Surely someone would approach Nii-sama with an offer he felt was honorable enough, and with a groom she could at least get along with.

Unbidden, her mind brought up an image of Renji, from that joint exercise with the Eleventh Division two years ago. The Twelfth Division had supplied something meant to ‘mimic’ acid, and he had gotten hit with it, resulting in him shrugging out of the upper half of his shihakushou. Her eyes had trailed down his expanded range of tattoos, down to his sash, and her mind had wondered just how far they went down. She hadn’t seen him unclothed since they were grubby, malnourished kids, and with the ‘inspirational’ material supplied by the Shinigami’s Women’s Association…

Her face burning, Rukia shook her head to dislodge the image from her mind. “Surely Nii-sama would never…even with…”

_There’s no use pondering what will never happen._ She told herself firmly. _Stick with the wedding kimono, and keep the other participants indistinct._

Picking up that marvelous mechanical pencil, Rukia started drawing out the outlines.

* * *

Ichigo sank down onto a rock, drenched in sweat. In addition to whatever Hollows turned up and his zanpakutou spirits training him every night, Isshin had started doing evening ‘spars’ in place of his morning ambushes. Most of the time they didn’t leave their bodies, using bokken in place of their zanpakutou.

Isshin called it ‘training’, but Ichigo was sure it was also him getting back into the swing of things. Even though twenty years of relative inactivity had done little to diminish reactions and instincts honed over three centuries. “I probably should have realized that something was up with you before, given how many times you’ve gone out my window.” Ichigo commented, guzzling Gatorade (something else Rukia marveled over). “Then again, I just thought your crazy shielded you.”

“Even in a gigai, a shinigami’s durability is related to the strength of their reiatsu. Even with my power tied up, there was still enough to make me sturdy.” Isshin explained, wiping his face with a towel. “How are you doing with controlling your reiatsu?”

“I’m still slipping if I get distracted, but so far drawing it closer to me works better than trying to suppress it completely.” Ichigo replied.

“I need to ask Tessai if he knows any kido that’s a high number because of the power requirements. After turning a basic ball of reiryoku into a weapon, I’d rather start you off large so it’s easier to feel how the energy flows. You might end up electrocuting everyone with Byakurai with our luck.” Isshin reminded himself.

“So what is with Urahara-san and Tessai-san? Are they Shinigami?” Ichigo asked, having had the question floating in the back of his mind for a while.

“Kisuke was the Captain of the Twelfth Division, and Tessai headed the Kido Corps. There was an incident, about a century ago, and they were exiled, along with a bunch of other captains and lieutenants. A lot of people thought it might be a frame-up, but once Central 46 rules, they don’t change their mind. You don’t even know what you’re charged with, let alone that you’re on trial for, until you’re picked up and the ruling delivered. Now they act as a source of supplies for Shinigami stationed in this area of the Living World. Kisuke’s too much of a genius for them to dare try to kill him. Doubly so since he was a member of the group they’d send out, the Onmitsukido.” Isshin revealed.

“What did they do to get exiled? I thought Rukia said captain- and lieutenant-class shinigami were rare, wouldn’t that have given them some leeway?” Ichigo asked, frowning. “Something smells rotten.”

“You’re not wrong there. Officially, they were exiled for illegal experimentation into blurring the lines between Shinigami and Hollows. Unofficially…Kisuke and Tessai stabilized the others who were the victims of such experimentation.” Isshin sighed. “Kisuke only told me the truth of what happened once, when he was drunk, after I’d known him for several years. But he’s sure that the person responsible is the same one who is behind all the unusual Hollows that have been appearing over the last century.”

“Like that one you and Mom fought?” Ichigo grimaced, standing with a wince. “Weren’t regular Hollows enough for this guy?”

“Apparently not.” Isshin led the way to the small elevator Yuzu had Looked Kisuke into adding, pointing out that such a thing was very practical for helping people leave if they were injured.

* * *

Despite himself, Ichigo found himself more and more worried the longer Hollow-him’s silence lasted. By day four, he lost all sense of him, distracting him enough for a Hollow to get him in the leg. Brushing off the concerned looks of Rukia and his family, he skipped dinner after Isshin had healed him, retreating to his room and his Inner World.

* * *

_Even Ossan was out of sight when he arrived. With a sigh, Ichigo surveyed his Inner World. Not sure where to go, he picked a direction, leaping to the building on his left. “I wonder how big this place is?” He commented out loud, unnerved by the solitude and quiet._

_Letting his gut lead him, he went to the base of the building he was currently on. The far side was covered in a layer of snow, with a self-contained snowstorm above it, which he cautiously approached. “Hello?” He called._

_Nothing answered. Crossing to the other side, he looked down._

_Blackness, with shapes blacker than black writhing within. “And I think I know where to go…” With a breath to steady himself, he leapt into the darkness._

_Only the sensation of wind and the changing patterns around him let him know he was falling. Turning so he could at least see what was in front of him, he finished his turn in time to see the shape in front of him, but not in time to try and dodge._

\--whywhywhymommyanddaddylikemyhairsowhydon’ttheywhydidthey—

_The first time he had gotten bullied for his hair color._

_Dodging another shape, he bumped into another one._

\--coldrainmom’snotmovingwakeupwakeupwakeupmyfault—

_That awful day._

_It hardly seemed worth it, trying to dodge the shapes if doing so meant hitting another, so, gritting his teeth, he braced himself for the next one._

\--whytaichouwhyareyouhurtingmeohkamiidon’twanttodie—

_…that wasn’t his memory._

\--squaddeadaroundmewhyishestillsmilingi’mbleedingoutbrightlight—

_Neither was that one._

_Feeling like he might be approaching something resembling a flat surface, he flipped over, touching down in what could politely be described as ‘chaos’._

_It was like someone had taken a bunch of pictures, chopped them up, and pasted them together haphazardly. Fragments of lives, fragments of souls, all with an undercurrent of despair, terror, and impotent rage._

** _“Came to see the monster under the bed?”_ **

_Turning, Ichigo saw Hollow-him, leaning against a fragment that showed a rainy night. “You’re still a part of me, so I came to see if you were…” Okay was how he wanted to put it, but nothing about this was okay._

_Hollow-him just stared. **“You’re an idiot.”** He said flatly._

_“For caring? Or for coming to look for you?” Ichigo asked back, eyes slowly drifting over the fragments, idly wondering how many there were._

_“**Two hundred fifty ****six.”**_

_“?”_

_“**That’s how many Shinigami the fucker used to make me. From Academy students up to potential Captains.”** Hollow-him elaborated. “**Well, two hundred fifty seven, counting you. Four multiplied by four multiplied by four multiplied by four.”**_

_Ichigo’s jaw dropped. “How corrupt is Seireitei for this to not be noticed?!” He demanded._

_“**It’s not like they were attacked all at once. Students drop out, people are discharged to care for sick family, officers leading patrols having bad intel…”** Hollow-him explained, shrugging. “**Mostly he targets his own division, and he’s a good enough manipulator to get away with it. Think it might be his zanpakutou. But he and his underlings would use the Hollows they created and fucked around with to practice chantless kido.”**_

_One fragment shifted, a black box descending on an unfortunate Hollow. The box shattered, and there was the sound of something breaking and brief glimpse of the Hollow beginning to fade away before the point of view Hollow pounced and started devouring. **“Each division is mostly self-contained, each Captain a Law unto himself. Probably not chance that one of his underlings is the Captain of the division that prints the monthly bulletin.”** Hollow-him was tense, trying to look casual with his arms crossed, but Ichigo still noticed how his hands clenched his arms._

_Cautiously, he walked up to him. “Thank you for looking.” Ichigo said quietly, laying a hand on a shoulder._

_In a flash, Ichigo’s arm was grabbed and twisted behind his back, aiming to break. Experience had Ichigo reacting, freeing his arm and elbowing his white double in the face. With an decidedly inhuman growl, Hollow-him swept his legs out from under him. Faster than Ichigo could track, he was pinned to the ‘ground’._

_A scuffle later, Ichigo was on his front, one arm twisted awkwardly under him, the other in the hold of Hollow-him, pinned between them as the white double laid on top of him. **“Thanking me for finding more things to use against you?”** Ichigo could hear the teeth in that mix of a question and a taunt. “**You may regret that.”**_

_Ichigo rolled his eyes. “Considering that none of these memories are good, of course I’m going to thank you for looking at these for kido. You could have said no and I’d have accepted that.” He started squirming, trying to get an opening to push Hollow-him off of him._

_Managing to move the arm pinned under him into a better position, he got the leverage he needed to roll over, with him pinning Hollow-him underneath him. “C’mon, let’s head back.” Ichigo said, getting up._

_Part of him thought about offering his hand, but he decided against it, given the antagonistic responses he had been getting. “So how do we get out?”_

_Turning back, he saw his white double still on the ground, looking a little dumbfounded. “Are you coming?” He asked._

_White-him just stared at him, long enough that he began to fidget. “**…the way out is the other way, idiot.”** He finally said, standing and walking away from Ichigo._

_Following, Ichigo was distracted by the rainy night fragment White-him had been leaning on when he arrived. There was a hail of what looked like white streaks, and the point of view turned to show a girl in a sailor fuku._

_His mom._

_“**She’d have been better off if she had stayed the fuck out.”**_

_White-him wasn’t looking back, but Ichigo noticed how his fists were clenched. **“Cuz all it did was make her interesting. Which is the last thing anyone should be when it comes to the fucker in chief.”**_

_“…” Ichigo said nothing as White-him, having said his piece, resumed walking. Not wanting to get lost in this unfamiliar corner of his soul, he quickly followed._

* * *

Ichigo yawned as he wandered into the bathroom, carefully stepping over Rukia on his way out. _Why would I be tired after that? Is it because it was a part of my soul I’d never been?_

**It’s part of you, but still ‘foreign’.**

_ **Plus the weight of all those negative emotions and memories.** _

Huh, both of them were coming in loud and clear now. _You two better not distract me while I’m in school, barring an actual emergency._

There was general agreement, even if Ichigo got the feeling Ossan may have kicked White-him to get him to agree. **_It’s boring!_**

_It’s important. Even if Shinigami do draw a salary, I doubt it would be anything I can use in this world. The teachers give me more leeway if my attendance is good along with my grades._ With a scowl, Ichigo remembered how, when he aged out of ‘cute’ and began drawing the attention of local gangs, the teachers became more hostile. _Plus the better my grades, the more choices I’ll have later._

Quickly brushing his teeth, Ichigo returned to bed, giving the calendar a quick glance. The glow of his digital clock gave him enough light to note the week. _Four more days…_

His shoulder ghosts—there was the feeling of getting smacked in the back of the head—alright, zanpakutou spirits were quiet, knowing exactly what he meant.

Ichigo fell right into dreams, _as Ossan and White-Ichigo both eyed the sky of the Inner World with trepidation. “**What is with bad things and rain?”** White-Ichigo grumbled, scowling at the gathering grey clouds._

_“_**Too much association between the two.”** _Ossan remarked, frowning deeper than usual._

_“**Right now I’d take snow over rain.”** White-Ichigo said, stalking over to the self-contained snowstorm that was the manifestation of Rukia’s power._

_Ossan remained on his flagpole, watching the sky. “_ **How will you react, once you know the truth?”** _ He murmured to himself._

_As much as he was Ichigo, he was still of another, capable of sensing other shards like himself. So he knew of how his counterpart was ripped away, leaving marks that would have healed, were it not for the immediate situation. _ **“Damn you.”** _ He muttered, just shy of not vocalizing at all._

_His distant progenitor will one day pay for the lives he stole, for the souls he judged wanting. Despite his initial stance, a tiny, vindictive part of him hoped Ichigo would play a key role on that one day._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't see Rukia not leaping at the chance of taking an art class. Yamato-e: Japanese painting. Sumi-e: ink painting.
> 
> Somehow, I highly doubt Aizen did nothing beyond using his Hogyoku to make weird Hollows, but I haven't read anything that has that idea. So my Hollow!Ichigo is more bitter than crazy, at least for now. 
> 
> Also somewhat convinced he wore the glasses not only to look harmless, but to make it harder to see his eyes clearly. I can't remember which serial killer (might be Ted Bundy), but if you focus on the eyes, not the smile, you get chills. Okay done being random. 
> 
> Remember, comments feed the soul.


	9. Chapter 9

“’The Flying Boy of Karakura’?” Karin repeated the news headline, dumbfounded.

Squinting at the blurry image (really, in this day and age one would think they could get better video), she realized the figure had orange hair.

At this time, Ichigo stalked in, Rukia at his heels and scowling harder than usual. “What’s up with the ‘Flying Boy of Karakura’?” Karin asked as Ichigo sat down at the table.

“It’s probably this guy’s fault.” Ichigo set something down on the table that resembled a jawbreaker candy.

“A gikon? But I heard the personalities were standardized…?” Isshin questioned as he also sat down.

“There was a program that created specially modified gikon, Project Spearhead. They were called kaizo konpaku, and they were to be inserted into corpses to fight Hollows, so each would have a trait that was enhanced.” Rukia explained. “But when the ethics of such a tactic were brought up, all of them were ordered destroyed. This one slipped through and ended up in my gikon order.”

Isshin groaned, putting a hand over his face. “Damnit Kisuke…so what do you plan on doing with it?”

“I’m not going to let him get destroyed just for existing.” Ichigo reaffirmed, Rukia nodding in agreement. “It seems kind of cruel to leave him as a pill all the time, but it’s not like he can go into a dog or a cat without pushing out the animal’s soul, and road kill is surprisingly difficult to find when you’re actively looking for it.”

“Hmmm…” Yuzu, leaving dinner at a stage where it didn’t need attention, hummed in thought. “Does it have to be a flesh and blood body?” She asked, going to her sewing bag.

“I don’t know…?” Rukia trailed off as Yuzu pulled out a lion plush toy. “We can try?” She suggested.

Not actually expecting it to work, Rukia was the only one taken aback when the lion began moving after Yuzu stuck the kaizo konpaku in. “Wha? Why am I a plush toy?” It asked, trying to bluster in the face of more people.

“As pissed off as I am with that stunt you pulled with my body today, it seems cruel to just leave you as a pill all the time. It was this or roadkill.” Ichigo informed it, Yuzu murmuring ‘language, Ichi-nii’ underneath her breath. “BUT! There’s rules.”

“What…kind of rules?” It asked carefully, hoping that they wouldn’t be too hard to follow.

“First and most important, perv on my sisters and I’m grinding you up into powder and feeding you to Hat’n’Clogs.” Ichigo declared with a glare.

“Make sure you use curry; Kisuke loves it, but it doesn’t love him back.” Isshin added.

The kaizo konpaku looked at the pair of girls the weird Shinigami meant. “Okay.” It agreed, not knowing how to say that they were too young to get his attention and not get pounded.

“Second, when you’re in my body no going crazy like today. Seireitei might be technologically backwards, but stunts like today’s might get someone’s attention. The only exception is if you and my sisters are attacked by Hollows. Leading to the third rule.” Ichigo crossed his arms. “In my body or not, your job is to keep my sisters safe. So treat them like you would one of your kaizo konpaku siblings and we shouldn’t have any problems.”

The black-haired girl didn’t seem impressed, while the lighter-hair girl smiled. “So we have another onii-chan!”

“We need to think of a name.” Rukia cut in, fully aware that she was technically digging herself in deeper trouble, but it wasn’t like she HAD to report finding a kaizo konpaku…

“Kai!” The kaizo konpaku exclaimed.

“No way!” Karin rejected. “That’s way too cool-sounding a name for you.” Ichigo nodded in agreement.

“Bostov?” Yuzu suggested, making everyone else frown.

“Kon?” Isshin suggested.

“I like it.” Ichigo agreed.

“Welcome to the family Kon-nii.” Yuzu greeted Kon with a smile. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your plushie better.”

Karin sighed as Yuzu carried Kon with her back to the kitchen, Kon too nervous about his safety to try fighting. “We can’t even get a normal pet…”

“Still trying to get your willful denial back?” Ichigo asked, as Isshin left to finish up some things in the clinic before dinner and Rukia pulled out her English workbook.

“No, but it would be nice if we could do something like everyone else…” She said, looking at the calendar, the kind that was a new sheet every day, ‘June 16th’ glaring at them.

* * *

“Now Rukia-chan, tomorrow we’re visiting the cemetery, so you can either go with us or go to school.” Isshin said after dinner.

“Tomorrow is the anniversary of Mom’s death.” Karin added for Rukia’s benefit. “Every year we spend the day at the cemetery.”

“I don’t want to intrude by tagging along…” Rukia waffled, watching Ichigo out of the corner of her eye. “But…just in case…”

Isshin nodded, before reminding his kids of the division of labor that never changed year to year.

Family meeting over, everyone dispersed. Isshin went to the closet in his room, feeling around the top shelf until his fingers brushed the boxes he wanted. One he brought out once a year, to reminisce. The other had been up on the shelf since Masaki had moved in. Wiping his hand across the top, he revealed the Quincy cross of the Kurosaki embossed on the lid under the dust. _I’ll go through this with the kids tomorrow night or the night after…_ Isshin decided, setting it on the nightstand next to the picture of Masaki and the kids.

Opening the other box, he pulled out the first stack of pictures, smiling sadly at the first one, old and faded with worn edges. It was a picture of Masaki as a baby, her parents beaming at the camera. The first dozen or so were similar, showing Masaki as she grew up, a couple with a young Ryuuken with her.

It was the picture of her in her high school uniform that he could see the sadness in her eyes. From what she had said, her parents had died right before she started high school, and she moved into the Ishida household. The next handful showed her with her friends, Ryuuken only showing up in the high school graduation picture.

It was the university era pictures that Isshin first appeared, in one he hadn’t realized she had taken at the time, as he was hardly near his best in it. “That first baby delivery.” He remarked, remembering that day. A women had come in, complaining of lower back pain, only to have her water break as he was getting her medical history. He had been a little panicked, juggling the phone trying to get an ambulance to take the woman to the hospital while tracking her unusually fast labor, only for the baby to arrive right as the ambulance arrived. Masaki had caught him blood-streaked and sweaty.

A few pictures from some of their dates (with a suspicious black cat in the background of a couple), then Masaki in her bridesmaid dress with Kanae in her wedding dress. Isshin had been drafted as a groomsman for Ryuuken by Souken-san.

And then their wedding day. Kisuke had drafted the Visored to act as his groomsmen and family. H9alf the fun was watching Shinji wind up Ryuuken, even as Isshin tried not to panic. It had just been a small, Western-style ceremony, with the san-san-kudo at the end. Kisuke had caught the two of them in the corner they had hidden in during the reception, neither of them able to wait any longer. The clothes had still been on, otherwise Kisuke would have died that day.

At least, since the reception was hosted at the Ishida house, they didn’t have to explain why Kisuke went darting away, not using shunpo even as Masaki used Hirenkyaku as she peppered him with arrows.

Ryuuken had preserved his reaction to finding out Masaki was pregnant, the bastard, as Isshin had fainted into his soup at the news. He’d had no idea that gigai were THAT realistic! He knew that gigai could bleed and eat and do other necessary bodily functions (along with the less necessary yet still enjoyable ones), but he hadn’t realized that he would be fertile as well!

Masaki had made little flip books, taking a picture of herself in the same pose every week of her pregnancy, ending with her holding Ichigo, then Yuzu and Karin.

Most of the other pictures were of their kids, Masaki having had more time to indulge her shutterbug tendencies than he did, but there were a couple that he had taken, where he had gotten her in the frame as well.

All too soon he reached the last picture in the box. She had been focused intently on whatever she had been writing, looking as gorgeous as always, that she hadn’t seen him get the camera.

Getting those pictures developed had been like a punch to the gut, since this last picture was taken the day before she...

Packing the pictures carefully back into the box, Isshin groaned as he moved to get up from the floor. “Maybe I really am getting old…” He mumbled, feeling unusually stiff as he made it to his feet.

Yuzu and Karin were curled up in Yuzu’s bed, a switch from other times, where Yuzu would join Karin in her bed. Rukia was still in her futon, while Ichigo was huddled into a ball, facing away from the door.

His check complete, Isshin quietly went through his bedtime routine, sliding into his painfully large bed. As hard as it was some days, feeling that empty space besides him, he couldn’t bear switching his bed out for a smaller one.

Doing so felt too much like acknowledging the truth.

* * *

** _He snarled at the emptiness crisscrossed by glowing strings. He felt like a ‘he’, even if for some parts that didn’t feel right. But he was bored and confined and he could feel her just past the strings, but they burned to the touch._ **

** _“Oh.”_ **

** _There she was, floating just beyond the strings. “I wonder why I ended up here again?” She asked, not reacting when he roared in her face, flinching away from the strings. _ **

** _“Well, if I’m going to end visiting you like this again, it would be nice if you didn’t always roar at me. Do you have a name?”_ **

** _He just roared again, putting extra emphasis on how he was a predator and she was prey._ **

** _“Maybe next time.”_ **

* * *

** _“So I’m dating that Shinigami who saved me. Shiba Isshin. But he’s using Kurosaki for some reason. You should have seen how he blushed when I complained about missing our wedding!” She prattled on, floating on her back and doing something with her arms and legs that propelled her around him._ **

** _Of course he knew the bastard was nearby; the damn strings burned more if he was closer._ **

** _She continued prattling, not bothered by his lack of response. There was no point in roaring at her if she wasn’t going to react, and he was totally not bothering to pay attention to her words. She was just…too loud to ignore completely. “So I know he’s like, centuries older than me, but he doesn’t really look that old, and he acts like a kid sometimes. Okay, MOST of the time, especially if we do something he’s never done before. I should take him ice-skating once the outdoor rink opens this winter. It’ll be hilarious to watch him flail around trying not to fall. He really is kinda goofy, but he looked so cool smoking!!!”_ **

* * *

** _“We’re getting married!!!” She was doing twirls and flips in the air. His eyes tracked her, vaguely amused. He had reached the point that he looked forward to her visits, if only to relieve the boredom and hear something other than himself._ **

** _“He went to Soken-jii to ask his permission, since my parents are dead, and Ryuu-kun gave him the shovel speech which is a little insulting cuz I can take care of him myself if he hurts and Urahara-kun is gonna ask the other Shinigami exiles to be there cuz otherwise Isshin’ll have nobody on his side and I can’t wait to FINALLY get him in bed cuz he’s all ‘wait until we’re married’ but I hate waiting and…”_ **

* * *

** _“I’m pregnant.”_ **

** _She floated there, hands behind her back. “But…you knew before I did, didn’t you?”_ **

** _Like always, he didn’t say anything, but this time it was because he had started moving to attach to the bright light that pulsed inside of her. The damn strings meant he couldn’t do anything but attach to it, but they wouldn’t be there forever._ **

** _“When you’re in him…will you protect my son?” He reacted for the first time, turning to look at her, stunned. “I know it’s too early to really know if it’s a boy, but it feels like a boy. He already feels so strong…and I know that he’ll protect everyone he can, but I get the feeling he might forgot about protecting himself. So…will you protect the protector?” She asked. “Unlike me, you’ll always be with him, watching his back and can stop him from doing something stupid. Like forgetting that sometimes, the protector needs to be protected as well.”_ **

** _She floated closer than she had ever done before. “I’ve never told Isshin or Urahara-kun or Ryuu-kun about how I’ve seen you, beyond when Isshin saved me. I know what Hollows are, but it’s not like you chose to become a Hollow, right? I overheard Urahara-kun talking about how much more frequent unusual Hollows are, so that means someone is making them on purpose. Purposely changing people. I’m sure the person responsible has been watching, no matter how careful we’ve been. Sometimes…sometimes I feel eyes watching me. So I know that the eyes will watch my son too. If nothing else, will you protect my son to spite him?”_ **

** _He couldn’t quite remember communicating in anything but roars since before his memory fragmented into different people, but he remembered from somewhere, that moving your head up and down meant ‘yes’, so that’s what he did._ **

** _She beamed at him, some dim part of him conjuring up the smile of a mother and compared it to her smile. “Thank you. It’s funny, all these years, they’ve been trying to figure out why you infected a Quincy instead of a Shinigami, since normally a Quincy’s soul commits Soul Suicide if tainted by a Hollow. But it’s not Shinigami versus Quincy, is it?”_ **

** _She trailed a finger along a string. “It’s man versus woman, right?”_ **

* * *

** _Fear suddenly pulsed through the small yet growing sideways city, making him and the other look up at the sky with frowns. He growled low in his throat, despite the inappropriate shape, as something brushed the child’s reiatsu._ **

** _He knew that reiatsu._ **

** _The other, who normally said nothing, suddenly stiffened. “No—!”_ **

** _The brilliant presence of the girl changed, feeling like something was ripped away from her. He focused on the other, who looked visibly shaken, mouth forming words but without the sounds they should have._ **

**He could feel his immediate progenitor being forcibly called back to the original soul, his resistance leaving pulsing wounds on the mother’s soul. He knew what that meant, and he felt a perverse sense of relief that she had not taught her children.**

**If she had, they might have fallen victim to the same force affecting the mother. He and his siblings could have been leaving pulsing soul wounds as they were ripped away from their charges.**

**The sky flashed red, and then the bright sun in the sky, that always shined when the boy was with his mother, vanished.**

_ **He froze as the girl’s reiatsu vanished, consumed by the foul one The Deceiver had directed into their paths. A low crone built up, erupting into a high-pitched wail as the sky turned gray and began dropping water on their heads.** _

_ **Faster than it had any right to, the water flooding the small city was up to his chest, and rising fast. He thrashed his limbs, trying to stay afloat yet away from the strings. ** _

_ **He sent a glare at the other, out of the water completely on his damn pole.** _

_ **Blinking, he saw the other had pulled him out of the water by the strings. It grated, not having been able to save himself, but…how did that word go? “…thanks…”** _

**He inclined his head in acknowledgement to the Hollow’s reluctant thanks as the storm and the flooding continued, looking up at the sky to conceal his own tears.**

**Everything had changed, and after feeling how his progenitor had been ripped away, he vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to keep the child beneath the notice of the original.**

* * *

_Ichigo woke up with a strangled gasp, heart racing and drenched in sweat. He was sitting up and trying to calm his breathing before he realized that he was in his Inner World. He felt rather than saw White-him and Ossan sitting behind him, forming a triangle._

_Ichigo rubbed a hand over his face, part of him expecting a clawed hand to touch a bone mask, or to press sunglasses into his face. He slumped back, touching the shoulders of the others. Seeing their hands resting on the ‘ground’, he laid his hands over them, the others turning to grab onto to him tight._

_Ichigo grabbed back just as tight, his heart calming despite the pulse of shared grief._

_Something in his heart seemed to shift, settling into place as he could feel himself reach a balance with the other two. Opening his mouth, Ichigo starting saying a name, whose origin he couldn’t place, but one that he was utterly sure of. “Zan—“_

* * *

With a low groan, Ichigo pushed Rukia’s hand off his shoulder, sitting up. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he dug out some clothes, he forgot all about the name he had been saying before Rukia disturbed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, picture a ‘bubble’, wrapped with string. Put inside the bubble child!Hollow!Ichigo. That’s what Ossan had pulled out of the water. 
> 
> (prepares for reaction because I honestly don't know what to expect from people)


	10. Chapter 10

_White Ichigo swore violently when Ichigo disappeared halfway through saying their name. “**Damn you, you midget!”**_

_Ossan was calmer. “_**Would you truly prefer him saying it now, or wouldn’t it be preferable if he says it for the first time in a battle, where we can show off?”** _He asked, shifting so he was now sitting back to back with White Ichigo._

_**“…you have a point…**” White Ichigo grudgingly conceded. He eyed the sky, which was gray and overcast with impending rain. “**You think he saw my memories because he dove into those dark depths, or because of the date?”**_

_“_ **It’s likely both.”** _ Ossan commented. “_ **All of this is new ground. Hybrids of any kind or mix are so rare to begin with, nevermind a situation such as yours.”**

_“**…so if your guy hadn’t done his thing right when she was facing down the Hollow, then…”** Ichigo’s dream had been shared between the three of them, and so was the knowledge both of them had known in the dream._

_Ossan didn’t answer._

_**“First that Hollow needs to go, if only to free her soul. I felt the guy who made me that day, so maybe purifying that Hollow will take her out of his reach.”** White Ichigo said, partly to fill the quiet, partly to hope for the impossible._

* * *

“Is there really a point for going? It’s not like Soul Society has view windows on cemeteries.” Karin asked as they disembarked the bus at the base of the cemetery’s hill. “Plus how her soul might have…”

“But this isn’t about appeasing her soul or guiding her to Heaven, this is about remembering her life.” Rukia said. “Even if, to our knowledge, there’s no way for our prayers and thoughts to reach them, that doesn’t mean there’s no point in them. She left her heart with you when she died, so, if nothing else, you can still pass on what is in your own heart to hers.” Rukia wasn’t sure if she managed to get her point across, but Karin’s dubious face disappeared as they started the climb.

“People still do things like this in Soul Society, even though we know, for the most part, the deceased has been reborn on Earth. Even though they’re living again, we’re still honoring the life they left behind.” Isshin remarked.

“I think this hill gets steeper every year.” Yuzu complained.

“Let Daddy encourage you! By walking on his hands!” Isshin started hand-walking up the hill, the mood switch throwing Rukia, even after a couple weeks.

“Ignore him. It encourages him otherwise.” Karin reminded Yuzu, but Isshin just sped up.

“You know, I only have Goat Face and Hat’n’Clogs as references, but if they’re typical examples of Captains…I fear for Soul Society.” Ichigo admitted, him and Rukia sidestepping as Isshin, having been kicked by Karin, went rolling down the hill.

Rukia wanted to protest, but then she remembered Sui-Feng-taichou’s love/hate obsession with Shihoin Yoruichi-sama, how no one had seen Komamura-taichou’s face, Kyoraku-taichou’s laziness, Zaraki-taichou’s battle lust, and Kurotsuchi-taichou’s…just Kurotsuchi-taichou…

“Once I stop to think about it, I have to agree.” Rukia conceded with a sweatdrop.

* * *

Rukia retreated some distance away once they reached the gravesite, giving the family privacy as they went through familiar rituals of incense and purifying water.

The domino game Isshin-taichou tried starting up wasn’t, however.

Her backpack was moving, and Kon emerged. “So stuffy…!” He complained. “Do you really think a Hollow will turn up today?”

“It’s not like there’s a pattern. And…” Rukia swallowed, her mouth dry. “You know the whole family is practically walking Hollow bait, right? Even though it’s hardly been a day…”

Kon hung over her shoulder, watching with her. “You know the records for the kaizo konpaku were destroyed along with my siblings.” He commented. “I doubt the people who had made us even bothered remembering stuff from their tests, like how one could only destroy rocks with one punch if you offered her gigai sweets, or the guy whose gigai could trip standing still, but solve really complex math problems with one glance. So…the only place they exist now is in my memories. Their pills were incinerated, along with the formulas and test videos and data graphs.”

Rukia looked away, finding herself remembering. The people in Inuzuri who would die in the alleys, and get dragged out to the edge of the town to rot, if there was no one willing to make an effort to dig a shallow grave in the hard earth. About the only care taken was to keep them away from the water, since even in Soul Society people could die from dysentery and consumption and cholera.

Everyone was too caught up in their own pitiful struggle for survival, so no one bothered to count the corpses. “Hey Kon?”

“?”

“…tonight, let’s write down everything you remember about your kaizo konpaku siblings. Everything that made them individuals, and not just assembly line products.”

“…okay…”

* * *

Sometime later, Ichigo and Isshin left Yuzu and Karin alone at the grave, Isshin going to speak to the priest, and Ichigo into the stand of trees. Rukia followed him. “I couldn’t tell the difference between living people and ghosts when I was a kid.” Ichigo said as she approached, Kon still hanging over her shoulder. “I’m still terrible at it. It had been raining a few days straight, so the river was high. There was a girl right at the water’s edge, swaying, without an umbrella or a raincoat. I thought she was gonna jump, so I ran to stop her.”

He looked up at the sky, still facing away from them. “The next thing I remember, Mom was on top of me on the river bank, covered in blood. I don’t know how it happened, just…she died trying to protect me from my own recklessness and stupidity.”

He didn’t need to add that he blamed himself for her death.

Rukia found herself reflecting on Isshin-taichou’s antics, all the effort he put into being outrageous. It was like he was trying to make up for the disappearance of the heart of their family.

Then her thoughts turned to her brother. How the best place to find him was at his personal shrine to his late wife, Lady Hisana, even all these decades later. She had heard whispers that he blamed himself for not insisting on a doctor sooner, for letting her keep pushing herself to the limit.

At her adoption, not a marriage. A memento, to be kept safe, but not too close.

A sound akin to an air raid siren came from the pager, making all of them jump. She fumbled for it, heart pounding because the pager would only make that sound when there was a very dangerous Hollow detected, one that managed to survive decades—

Flipping it open, her heart went in her throat. “What is it?” Ichigo asked, already grabbing Kon and sticking his hand in.

“…Grand Fisher…” Rukia read off numbly. “It’s-it’s a really strong Hollow. It has a lure that it can detach and look like a person. It…it only eats people who can see the lure.”

Ichigo felt sick, but he pushed that down as he swallowed Kon’s pill. “How long has that thing been—?”

“Fifty four years.”

It was then that sickening wave of Hollow reiatsu hit…

That was too close to his sisters.

* * *

Yuzu struggled to focus. There had been a girl at the edge of outcropping that Karin approached, only then there was a monster behind the girl. A Hollow.  
It pinned Karin, and a tentacle lashed out when she ran to help her, grabbing her by the throat. The girl was talking, but she couldn’t make out words.

She knew she was the weakest of her siblings, even if no one ever said it out loud.

Which is why she spent every spare waking moment trying to summon a spirit bow. And not just any kind, but one that she could use one-handed.  
Just like Mom.

She didn’t know that a focus would make it a thousand times easier, or that she needed years of training to make it as small as she wanted.

But people forget that she is just as much a Kurosaki and Shiba as Ichigo and Karin.

Just as she hit the edge of unconsciousness, she felt something flare into life around her right hand. In the same moment, she released the arrow that had formed with her bow.

The Hollow roared, dropping Yuzu as her arrow had sliced off the tentacle holding her. At the same time, Karin released her crude Shakkahou, making it rear back and get off of her. Grabbing her twin, Karin started running, Yuzu getting her feet under her to run properly and not be dragged along.

“Karin! Yuzu!” Ichigo—no, Kon—called as he approached, Ichigo out of his body darting past with Rukia on his back.

Tucking a twin under each arm, Kon turned and ran to where he felt Isshin.

* * *

“Oyaji!” Isshin turned to see Kon in Ichigo’s body running towards him, the girls under his arms.

“Hollow—at the grave—all hairy—“ Yuzu got out, panting and struggling to stay awake after her exertion.

Leaving Kon to guard the girls at the small shrine building, Isshin raced to where he felt the heaviness of an experienced Hollow, glad he had been practicing shunpo in his gigai.

* * *

Ichigo stared numbly at the girl from six years ago. If he had needed any more confirmation, White-him screaming in his ear would have been it.

** _King! It’s him! This is the fucker the fucker-in-chief pushed into our path! He’s the one—_ **

Ichigo blinked hard, his vision turning blurry a brief moment. **Fool! He hasn’t learned our Name! If you try to take over without that—**

_ **AND WHAT DOES THAT MATTER AS LONG AS IT DIES?!?!** _

Ichigo could taste the grief and anguish on his tongue, both the frantic, wild kind from White-him, and the simmering, constrained kind from Ossan.

“You’re the one. From six years ago. By the river…I thought you would jump in…but the next thing I knew…” He tightened his grip on his zanpakutou, darting in.

The girl…threw (?) herself to the side. “Six years ago? I can’t remember that far back. But if you’ve seen me before, and survived…” The illusion that was the girl slid off, revealing a tassel, a tentacle shooting out of the top to reattach to the main Hollow, which had now emerged.

Rukia started when Isshin suddenly appeared next to her. That drew her from her daze. “Disintegrate! Rondaninni’s black dog! Read—“

“_**S**_T_**A**_Y _**O**_U_**T**_ O_**F**_ T_**H**_I_**S**_ R_**U**_K_**I**_A!” There was a bizarre…echoing…in his voice, as his reiatsu suddenly shifted to mostly Hollow for a brief moment. “This is my fight. And my fight alone. Don’t interfere.”

It had begun to rain, and the similarities to another rainstorm made her pause, mouth open. Clenching her fists briefly, she began digging in her backpack.

Isshin, however, was unfazed. “Ichigo! If you fall, I’ll finish it!” Isshin vowed.

Ichigo was about to protest, but then he saw the look in Isshin’s eyes. With a slow nod, he turned back to Grand Fisher.

Rukia pulled out her glove, straining under the weight of Isshin’s gigai as she lowered it to rest against a tree.

Biting her lip, she hugged herself, remembering a different fight in a different rain. Ukitake-taichou’s words echoed in her ears as she found herself unable to look away.

“Don’tinterferedon’tinterferedon’tinterfere…” She chanted, unaware, wishing she had at least the reassuring weight of Sode no Shirayuki on her hip.

Isshin was too disciplined to pace, but the hand resting on his zanpakutou played with the tassel, channeling some of his anxious energy.

Ichigo could feel White-him guiding his movements, lending Ichigo his experience. One limb flew off in a spray of blood, only to be replaced by another. Slashing off a tentacle aimed at his head with the smaller blade (Ossan’s reflexes letting him react in time), his larger blade was caught by Grand Fisher’s regrown limb.

Except that didn’t matter, as the claws extended, the thumb piercing his chest while the rest penetrated his back. Dimly aware of Rukia and Oyaji’s reactions off to the side, he could feel his power pulsing in his veins. He had managed Blut Vene, but not enough to completely block the claws. _I think it worked enough to keep my lung from being pierced…_

“You think your anger will be enough to kill me? All it means is that your heart is shaken, dulling your blade.” Grand Fisher grabbed his lure. “Want to know how I keep killing Shinigami? Everyone, even the ones who proclaim themselves cut off from everyone…always have one person they could never bring themselves to harm…” He opened his hand…

…and Kurosaki Masaki smiled at her son.

**Look at the eyes.** Ossan ordered Ichigo and his Hollow-self. **There is nothing of Masaki in there.**

Calming enough to do as Ossan ordered, Ichigo saw what he meant.

The look in the eyes was the same as when it had been the girl, reflecting the Hollow’s cruelty. **If we go through the lure, we can get him.**

Surprisingly, it was White-Ichigo who baulked. **_I…_**

Closing his eyes to the fight, to Ichigo’s body, he finally admitted out loud what he had always denied. _**…she was my sun, just as much as she was her family’s sun.**_

**Then I will be our eyes.**

_**You ruthless bastard**_. White-Ichigo remarked, surprised and a touch envious.

There was a flash, of an ancient battlefield, charred corpses rising up, the air painfully hot and dry. **No matter my ties to Ichigo, there is still that part of me who remembers facing the thugs that later generations revered as the founders of the Gotei Thirteen.** A different flash, showing a woman with disheveled hair and a slasher’s grin, her zanpakutou dissolving flesh even as she healed it.** So I remember how to be ruthless.**

**This is not ruthless; this is mercy.**

All of this took scarcely a moment. During this exchange, Grand Fisher had continued rambling on. Ichigo, remembering the kido White-him had reluctantly shown him two nights ago (since he had drawn blood when he headbutted him and broke his nose), called up that sense of lightning, similar to a Tesla coil he had seen on a field trip.

Slashing the smaller sword, he called, “Hadou Yon: Byakurai!!”

A spread of lightning shot out of the blade, the rain on Grand Fisher’s fur/hair increasing its effectiveness, connecting with enough power to generate a smell similar to burnt hair.

Isshin and Rukia just stared at the attack, before turning to each other. “Did you…” She asked.

“…no…” He replied.

“You talk too much.” Ichigo said shortly, sending power into the larger zanpakutou, White-him adding enough of his own to give it an extra bite.

Closing his eyes, he let Ossan, the least emotionally compromised of the trio, guide his arm, slashing down vertically as he let go of the power that built up enough to be visible.

“Ichigo!”

His/Their eyes flew open. Grand Fisher had made the image sound almost like her, with just a hint of something off. So they saw the energy blast cut through the lure and hit the mask behind it, even as a tentacle burst through the lure, hitting his chest.

“Ichigo!” Isshin and Rukia yelled, Rukia giving in and running to catch Ichigo as he collapsed to his knees.

Grand Fisher’s mask was cracked and a hair’s breadth away from breaking, but not dead yet. A tentacle shot out of its head, connecting to the battered lure. Then, like a deflating balloon, Grand Fisher’s body deflated, the tentacle pulling into the lure, a swollen bulb at the end.

“Heh, the lure is just as much my body—“

“Getsuga Tenshou!” A crescent of energy bisected what was left of the lure completely.

As both pieces of Grand Fisher began dissolving away, there was a flash of a familiar presence, making with Ichigo and Isshin tense. “Masaki…?” Isshin whispered, that familiar presence fading as soon as he felt it.

“…thank you…for letting me fight it…Dad…” Ichigo got out, giving in to blood loss and the unfamiliar exertion of his zanpakutou spirits acting with him.

“Thank you for not dying, Ichigo.” Rukia whispered as Isshin started healing Ichigo.

* * *

Kon, Yuzu, and Karin (who had been asking Kon about what he knew of Soul Society), looked up as Rukia walked up. “Did they get it?” Yuzu asked, yawning.

“…yeah. It…it was the one that…” Rukia trailed off, not needing to finish her sentence. “They’re at the grave now.”

“I’m glad I managed a Shakkahou on it then.” Karin said viciously.

“And I got a bow to form! Look!” Furrowing her brow, the small bow and arrow Yuzu had conjured earlier formed around her right hand. However, she was only able to hold it a moment before it faded away and she passed out.

“I honestly hadn’t expected Yuzu to pull something like that off.” Rukia admitted as she sat down next to Karin, Yuzu’s head resting on Kon-ichi’s lap.

“She’s as stubborn as Ichi-nii and I are, so I’m not.” Karin commented.

“So you managed a Shakkahou then?”

“Well kinda. It was probably more like Ichi-nii’s exploding ball…”

* * *

Ichigo stood in front of his mother’s grave. Isshin, after finishing his yearly ritual of smoking for his wife, had started back to the others, giving Ichigo some privacy. “Thank you for helping me.” He said out loud to Ossan and White-him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see wispy images of them on each side of him. _**It was Our fight, more than any one of ours alone**_. White-him admitted.

**Even if, in the end, Grand Fisher was merely the tool of her murder.** Ossan rumbled. Pulling a jug of sake out of his coat (somehow), he poured an offering over the stone.

_**You bastard, you have sake and you’re not sharing?!**_ White-him complained as their wispy images faded away.

Pushing away the sounds of a scuffle, Ichigo closed his eyes as he remembered that brief feeling of his mother’s presence after Grand Fisher was killed. He didn’t know if a Quincy’s soul could survive inside a Hollow for years, given how harmful a Hollow’s power is to them, but…

…he had a feeling his mother had managed to.

* * *

Frowning, Ryuuken cautiously answered the phone. Shiba knew better then to bug him, today of all days, especially since—“We got him. The Hollow that killed Masaki.” Shiba said bluntly.

Ryuuken felt his heart skip a beat. “’We’?” He asked faintly.

“Ichigo managed most of the fight, and I ended it before it could flee to see another day.” Shiba clarified.

Silence stretched over the phone line. “Thank you for informing me…Kurosaki Isshin…” Ryuuken finally said, calling him ‘Kurosaki’ to his face for the first time.

Shi-Kurosaki didn’t make any stupid comments, for once, just quietly hanging up.

Dropping his phone in the cup holder, Ryuuken leaned his head against the steering wheel. Uryuu always wondered why he never acknowledged the day Kanae’s body died, not knowing that for all purposes, she had actually died the day she collapsed. Only his faint, arrogant, hope had pushed him to keep her on life support those final three months.

Starting the car, it was a short drive from the hospital to Uryuu’s building, his son not knowing that he was the building’s owner, or that the ‘inheritance’ his grandfather had left him was replenished by him every month. “I’m sorry Kanae, Masaki.” He whispered, lighting up.

He had always told himself and them that Quincy duties would not keep him from his children, only for the career he did chose to do that far more effectively. Cracking a window open so he wouldn’t suffocate (no matter how appealing the option seemed some days), he passed the night outside Uryuu’s building, chain-smoking and remembering the days when silly poems were only silly poems.

Not portends of doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, canon for this story is that Grand Fisher DID eat Masaki's soul that day. And that the loss of her Quincy powers was not in itself fatal. She would have recovered and still been able to use reiryoku (but not Quincy-specific techniques) were it not for Grand Fisher. 
> 
> Phew, emotional roller coaster over.


	11. Chapter 11

She ran at the heels of Ichigo-dono and Shiba-taichou. Upon hearing about the missing Academy students, there was nothing Yamamoto-soutaichou could have done to keep them from going.

Not with the Shiba twin girls among the group.

Reaching a clearing, they found it covered with empty Academy uniforms, but no students to wear them. Near an area of charred and smoldering ground, lay a pair of girls uniforms.

Karin’s soccer ball bracelet, and Yuzu’s strawberry print hair ribbon were on top.

Just beyond stood the Hollow, massive and covered with tentacles. “Was it you?” Ichigo-dono asked flatly, unnaturally still.

“Does it matter if it was? You three are my meal ticket now.” It said, licking what passed as lips with its tongue, which truthfully seemed half-tentacle.

“Ichigo-dono, let me go in and—“

“Stay back, Kuchiki.” Ichigo-dono wasn’t looking at her, eyes shadowed. “Taichou…Dad…let me fight this alone.”

Shiba-taichou slowly nodded. She could only stare as Ichigo-dono flash-stepped to the Hollow, hands crackling with Byakurai.

She lost track of their movements, so the next thing she knew, Ichigo-dono was unsealing his Zanpakutou, one hand on a tentacle. “Suiten sakamake, Nejibana-!”

The blade shattered.

The Hollow laughed, high and cruel. “Like my special ability? Well one of them.” It taunted.

“Shiba-taichou please—!”

“We can’t, Rukia-chan. This isn’t a battle to protect life; it’s a battle to protect pride. Right now, he’s fighting for the pride of his sisters, the pride of the other students, the pride of the teachers…and his own pride as a protector.” Shiba-taichou said grimly.

She resigned herself to impotence, pleading with Ichigo-dono to win, despite knowing the odds.

Now the Hollow was inside Ichigo-dono, and Shiba-taichou was engaging him, yelling at her to run. Blindly obeying, she hadn’t gone far when she found herself pausing.

Shiba-taichou was still recovering from his near career-ending injury, on top of Ichigo-dono being his son, but they were still officers. The battle was on a level she couldn’t reach.

But…

She ran back, not sure what she could do but knowing Shiba-taichou needed some kind of back-up.

She stood there, sword in hand, frozen, as the Hollow-possessed Ichigo-dono, his skin bone white with tentacles for fingers and coming out of his eyes and mouth (a tiny part of her that wasn’t terrified gagged) and she was still standing there like an idiot—

There was blood on her hands, the fabric of Ichigo-dono’s shihakushou soaking up only some of the blood, sticking to her hands because her zanpakutou had gone through his chest up to the hilt.

But his skin wasn’t white anymore; it was back to its normal tan. With a painfully wet cough (spraying blood on her hair), he wrapped his arms around her, no matter how much that movement had to have hurt. “Thank you…I can…leave my heart with you…” He said, in that warm tone he only used for his sisters and why was he thanking her her sword was IN HIS CHEST and—

There was that crazed, cruel laugh again. “No he can’t; I’m taking both of you!” His skin flashing back to white, the tentacles coming from his eyes lashed out, grabbing—

* * *

There was something on her face, and she grabbed it, blindly throwing it away. Now properly awake, she sat up, to discover she had thrown Kon. “You were groaning.” He said as explanation, still upside down in the corner she had thrown him into.

“Just a dream.” She said shortly, standing and going to the bathroom to splash water on her face.

Reluctant to return to bed (and the dream), she wandered into the kitchen. Quietly marveling (yet again) at the refrigerator, she opened it, blindly staring at her drink choices.

And that was another amazement; the sheer variety of choices, beyond water, tea, and sake. Sometimes, the amount of choices, not just in drinks but in everything, paralyzed her. Even though she would eat everything and anything placed in front of her, she had trouble wrapping her mind around the choices available at times.

And how, beyond a law banning ‘minors’ (under twenty, apparently) from consuming sake (or any of the foreign alcohol), the only limits for anyone was personal preference and cost. Even the fruit could be had year round, if that was what a person wanted.

“Rukia-nee?” Looking at the stairs, she saw Yuzu, covering a yawn.

“Did I disturb you?” Rukia asked, closing the ‘fridge’ as Yuzu flipped the light switch for the light set in the kitchen ceiling.

(Lighting had been a whole separate amazement.)

Yuzu shook her head, grabbing something out of a cupboard. “I’m tired, but I keep feeling the Hollow’s tentacle on my neck when I fall asleep.” She explained, retrieving milk from the fridge.

Rukia leaned back on the counter as Yuzu stirred a brown powder she had gotten out with the milk in a pot on the stove, with a delicious smell soon hitting her nose.

After a few minutes, Yuzu handed Rukia a foreign-style cup (with a handle) filled with the liquid, steam rising up. “It’s hot chocolate. Ichi-nii said Mom would make him hot chocolate when he woke up at night from nightmares. And he did the same thing for me and Karin-chan.” Yuzu commented, taking a sip from her own ‘mug’ (or so Rukia thought it was called).

Carefully sipping the hot liquid, Rukia tried (and failed) not to moan at the taste. Swallowing, it felt like its heat was spreading through her body, better and faster than hot green tea on a cold morning.

“So how long have you been a Shinigami?” Yuzu asked. “Not as long as Dad, right?”

Rukia made a face. “Gods no! Only a few decades, compared to his two or three centuries. But…long enough.” For nightmares.

A nightmare.

Conversation lapsed as the pair savored the hot chocolate. _I should bring some back for Ukitake-taichou. This seems like something he’d enjoy, if he hasn’t come across it already._

Standing here, in a gigai clothed in Chappy pajamas (squee!) with a budding Quincy and kido user…there was a strange sense of peace. Even her background anxiety about the punishment she knew she’d get for her actions and Nii-sama’s reaction had just…

Rukia wasn’t sure what she had meant to say, but certainly not what she did end up saying. “Your father’s nephew was the lieutenant of the Thirteenth Division when I was adopted into the Kuchiki clan and became a Shinigami.”

Yuzu blinked her. Rukia continued, finding that, since she had opened the topic, the words flowed out. “Shiba Kaien. He’d passed the Academy entrance exams on his first try and finished in two years. My adoption meant that I was exempt from the graduation exams and the division entry exams, which was naturally cause for talk, especially after I failed to earn a seated officer’s position. Kaien-dono…he treated me like everyone else, an island of normalcy amidst the unfamiliarity of my new circumstances. He helped me improve my skills, and reach Shikai.

“He was married, and his wife, Miyako-dono, was the Third Seat officer. She was kind and graceful and gorgeous and skilled…the perfect example of what a female Shinigami should be.” Rukia smiled down into her hot chocolate. “If Kaien-dono was my mentor…she was my idol, the kind of woman I wanted to be.”

“They sound like wonderful people.” Yuzu commented, refilling their mugs.

“They were. Even when there were rumors of Kaien-dono taking me as his mistress, or that I was trying to sleep my way into an officers’ position…the gracious way she acted, and disabused the more forward of those notions…” With a smile, Rukia remembered how Miyako-dono had terrified the rumor mongers into repentance with a smile and manners, much like Unohana-taichou subdued rowdy Eleventh Division members.

“One day, she led a squad on a reconnaissance mission and…no one made it back. What was…what was left of her body was all that was recovered. Kaien-dono, he…he couldn’t wait for a combat squad to be fully assembled, so our captain, Ukitake-taichou, revealed the suspected location of the Hollow’s nest, on the condition that he accompanied Kaien-dono. I went along as Kaien-dono’s apprentice, but there was no time to find anyone else, and we couldn’t convince Kaien-dono to wait.

“When we got there, and the Hollow came out…Kaien-dono asked to fight it alone. Ukitake-taichou agreed. The Hollow…it had a weird ability. Once a night, the first Shinigami that touched its tentacles…had their zanpakutou destroyed. Kaien-dono was robbed of Nejibana, regarded as the most powerful water-type zanpakutou. I wanted to help him, as he fought with fists and kido, but Ukitake-taichou…he said there’s two kinds of battles: battles to protect life…and battles to protect pride. Kaien-dono was fighting for the pride of the fallen men, of his wife, and his own pride. It might have been foolish pride, but for me to intervene…” Rukia didn’t notice how her face was wet.

“Kaien-dono was holding his own, but when he said that his kido was more than enough to kill the Hollow, it felt insulted. So it used its other special ability.” Rukia set her mug down on the counter, hugging herself. “It…it possessed Kaien-dono. Ukitake-taichou explained it to me later…it wasn’t like human possession. Since both of them were spiritual beings, there was no way to separate them. So it was either let the Hollow eat him from the inside…or kill them. Kill him. Taichou had ordered me to run, but I disobeyed and came back. I didn’t have any kind of plan, just…’I have to save Kaien-dono.’”

Yuzu laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ukitake-taichou…he’s been sick since he was three. Nothing can cure him, so he’s been in limbo, he said. He has good days, but whatever his illness is can flare up at any time. And it flared up when he was fighting the Hollow. I was standing there, Taichou yelling at me to kill him, it’s not Kaien anymore, and he-it was lunging at me with tentacles coming out of his eyes and his mouth but I’m frozen just holding my sword out—“

Yuzu hugged Rukia, and Rukia hugged back just as tight. “Ukitake-taichou implied, later, and your father agreed, that Kaien-dono must have been fighting back, on the inside, and he got enough control back to keep the Hollow from avoiding my sword. He…he apologized, for dragging me along into this mess…then he thanked me. He always said to make sure that you never die alone, that you leave your heart behind with those you care for as long as someone’s with you when you die…”

Rukia could vividly remember the last time she had been hugged; when she got back to the Kuchiki manor, still covered in Kaien-dono’s blood, after taking him back to his siblings, Byakuya had been waiting at the gate. It had been brief, like he had moved without realizing it, but the way his eyes flicked over her body, looking for the source of the blood and having not noticed the transfer to his own clothes…

_Oh, I had forgotten that part. It was the only time he was looking at me, not at my clothes or just beside me or Hisana-sama’s ghost._ Satisfying himself that she wasn’t bleeding, he had said, “Take as much leave as you want or need. I will sort it out with Ukitake-san.” Then he departed for the captain’s meeting relating to what had just occurred.

He went to Kaien-dono’s funeral in her place, not as the Sixth Division Captain. After a week and a half of scrubbing the blood off of Sode no Shirayuki and her hands long after it was gone and wandering the manor at night to avoid the nightmares, she informed him that she was returning to duty. He only nodded. She thought he understood, given she had heard of his own return to duty only a short time after Hisana-sama's death. 

“It had raining, when Kaien-dono fought that Hollow.” Rukia tacked on at the end, reaching out for her hot chocolate the best she could without breaking the hug.

Yuzu shifted position, so they were side hugging. “I don’t know if I could have kept myself from interfering this afternoon, if I had been in your shoes.” She admitted. “Even though I’d just have distracted Ichi-nii…”

They finished their hot chocolate in silence. Rinsing out the mug and bidding another good night to Yuzu, Rukia returned to her futon, feeling lighter than she had been for a long time. Ichigo was on his stomach, arm dangling off the bed. On an impulse, Rukia grabbed his hand after she laid down, and he gripped back just as tight, revealing he wasn’t asleep. “You know he’d kick your ass if you keep blaming yourself.” He whispered.

“As long as you know your mother would do the same thing.” 

* * *

Omake (?) Rukia’s Prayers Were In Vain

Or:

How Twelfth Division Gets Inspiration

It was the most exciting thing to happen every month in the Twelfth Division. Only a strict and unchangeable schedule of necessary staffing needs kept essential functions running during the event, even if half of them sneaked in or hacked into surveillance systems.

Inspiration Viewing.

A division less particular about terminology might have called it a movie night. Eleventh Division would probably call it ‘Watch Pansy Ass Idiots Get Beat Up’.

Remember, terminology, as Kurotsuchi-taichou repeated (usually daily, in an annoyed tone of voice), is what made the difference between ‘torture’ and ‘science’.

Exposing a Quincy soul to Hollow energy and filming the whole thing? Torture.

Exposing a Quincy soul to ‘infectious energy to determine rate of corruption’ and ‘creating an audiovisual record for later reference and study’? Science.

To recent division arrivals and R&D hopefuls, there were rules. If you throw up, you are required to clean it up yourself, preferably by returning it to whence it came.

If you faint, you have volunteered for any studies and experiments inspired by the movie.

No arguing; the Captain always has first, last, and only say on vetoing a movie.

While it wasn’t a rule per se, it was highly recommended that you learn English at minimum. Attempts at an audio translator were going poorly; souls kept losing sense of self, or lost language ability completely.

Akon elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing aside occupied roller chairs. It was his program that generated a movie title based on a set of parameters, so he had the right of the button push. Picking up a small mallet, he hit the gong next to the station, quieting the room. “Okay people! I’m starting the randomizer!”

There was some shuffling and rustling of cloth and snack bags as the screen turned out, flashing through letters and kanji. With a beep, it stopped. “Tonight’s letter is English letter ‘J’.” He called out, per routine.

After the letter was selected, the program ran through movie titles beginning with that letter (The word ‘the’ not counting), according to his parameters. After a moment and another beep, it spat out a title. “’Jurassic Park’.”

“Summary?” Kurotsuchi-taichou ordered/asked.

“’Experience a film 65 million years in the making! Travel to the remote island theme park and be blown away by the majesty of dinosaurs and watch as modern man tries to escape prehistoric killer instinct!’” Akon dutifully read off.

One of the newer R&D members, tapping away on a tablet, showed it to Kurotsuchi-taichou. “These are dinosaurs Kurotsuchi-taichou.” She said.

Kurotsuchi-taichou looked at her, looked at the tablet, looked at her again, and finally looked up. “Play it.”

The lights were dimmed as Akon pulled up the movie, frankly surprised the girl hadn’t been killed on the spot and mentally began rearranging things to account for her likely impending 'departure'.

The bubble of space that surround Kurotsuchi-taichou and Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou grew through the opening scenes, as Kurotsuchi-taichou had a habit of grinding his teeth through parts of the movie that were too slow for his tastes. But, knowing how even the smallest, most insignificant moment could inspire somebody, he let them play, taking notes on the imager that had been used (attempted to be used) on the dig site. “Humans willingly go into places like this and dig stuff up? How do they know where to go?” Someone whispered even as they wrote the question down.

Despite the rather dull (to him) nature of the reveal, Kurotsuchi-taichou was still impressed by the first view of the first dinosaur. Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou obligingly began working through the math to estimate weight, density, length, and strength needed to raise up on the back legs.

Pens and pencils flashed through the exposition in the Visitor’s Center, noting down every word.

“Tch. Where’s the killer instinct?” Kurotsuchi-taichou complained, still noting down what Muldoon said about how one could see the raptors ‘working things out’.

Even the presence of Kurotsuchi-taichou couldn’t completely suppress the cheer that went up as the T. Rex ate the lawyer. “I want one…” Someone whined, referring to the T. Rex.

After all the hype surrounding the raptors, Kurotsuchi-taichou felt a touch underwhelmed when they were properly revealed. “Meh.” He said, not impressed with how a pair of infants trapped one in a walk-in freezer, and at another’s ill-thought-out revenge attack on the T. Rex.

The lights undimmed as the credits rolled. Now was the time for ‘open discussion’ or rather, calling out ideas and questions, but it always took a bit to get going under Kurotsuchi-taichou. “How long ago was this made?” Someone in a corner called out.

Akon checked. “…about twenty five years ago.”

“Either way the dinosaurs looked real in like, all the scenes. Really real, not fake real.” Someone else called out from a position on top of a cabinet.

“Sometimes they used robotics and animatronics, other times they used computer graphics. It depended on the scene in question.” The girl who had shown Kurotsuchi-taichou the pictures of dinosaurs explained.

“I thought DNA degrades too fast?” A girl wedged between Akon’s chair and the wall called out.

“Didn’t they use DNA from other animals to patch the holes though?”

“There’s a book.” Dino-girl, as the room had started thinking of her as, piped up. “That has a lot more detail about the hows. There’s also a sequel book and three other movies.”

“Add the titles to the recommended reading list.” Kurotsuchi-taichou ordered. “Add ‘more teeth’ to your search parameters Akon.”

Quickly doing that, Akon ran the program again. “’Jaws.’”

Dino-girl straightened up as Akon read the summary. “’When a gigantic great white shark threatens a coastal town, the chief of police, a marine biologist, and a bitter fisherman/shark hunter set out to find and kill it.’”

“What’s a shark?” The person on top of the cabinet asked, receiving a mass of confused noises for answers.

With a few clicks, Akon pulled up the file Dino-girl had sent him, revealing what appeared to be a giant fish, with a mouth full of teeth.

Kurotsuchi-taichou smiled his own tooth-filled smile. “Play it.”

Akon felt a shiver go down his spine as Dino-girl began humming something as he pulled up the movie*.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Three guesses what she's humming, and the first two don't count. 
> 
> For those who haven't read my Akatsuki no Yona story 'Drawn' (likely most of you), Omake (?) do happen in the world of the story; there's just no place in the main storyline to stick it. 
> 
> I realize people will likely comment on the Omake (?) over the main chapter, but please let me know what you think of that as well.


	12. Chapter 12

While they hadn’t done any practice or training the day of the anniversary, tonight Isshin brought down a box after dinner. “This has been up on the shelf in ou-my closet since Masaki moved in, when we got engaged.” He explained. “So I have no clue exactly what’s in it.”

“What’s with the manji?” Karin asked.

“Actually it’s meant to be the style of cross the Kurosaki family used in their focuses. They’re on your baby blankets. The daffodils are the symbol of the Tenth Division, while the spirals are Shiba and the peaks Kurosaki.” Isshin corrected, carefully removing the lid.

Clearly Masaki had been in the box at some point between then and her death, as there was a letter on top, marked ‘For my family’. Underneath were what looked like books and boxes, and a couple scrolls. There was no wax seal, just a narrow, dark blue ribbon.

Rukia and Kon watched the surviving Kurosaki family members exchange looks, almost daring each other to be the one to reach for the letter. It was only when Kon made to move for the letter that Ichigo’s hand shot forward, grabbing it. He blinked at it, like he didn’t realize he had moved his hand at all. With a deep breath, he pulled the bow in the ribbon out.

It was dated the day before her death.

* * *

_Dear Isshin, Ichigo, Karin, and Yuzu,_

_If the four of you are reading this, then what I have been dreading has come to pass, and I am not there to tell you this myself._

_Mom and Dad always said the Kurosaki clan had been priests and seers originally; it was what drew the attention of the Quincy King, Yhwach, to start with. From their stories, the ability had once been far stronger, strong enough to use at will, but enough of it has survived the generations to leave the Kurosaki with strong feelings towards certain matters._

_Usually their deaths._

_I remember my parents had always dreaded one day of the year above the rest, and, sure enough, just before I started high school, that day was their date of death. My aunt was the one to really push me marrying her son (and my cousin), Ryuuken, but while I knew in my head that it was the right thing in terms of the Echt Quincy bloodline, I knew in my soul that it wasn’t right for either of us._

_And then I helped Isshin, and became infected by that weird Hollow. When I bugged Urahara-kun about it, he said it was more likely an ‘Arrancar’—a kind of Hollow that had typically removed their masks and gained Shinigami powers. Given the mask was most decidedly present, I doubted his opinion, but I’m digressing._

_Tomorrow is the day of the year I have always dreaded above all others. When I had been pregnant with Ichigo, I had thought it might have related to perhaps losing Ichigo, despite Isshin practicing with the incubator daily once I hit the third trimester, and Urahara-kun’s assurances that despite the shifting makeup of his soul Ichigo would still be born ‘human’, but that year it came and went without issue._

_Now it has arrived again, and my feelings of dread threaten to suffocate me._

_Just as strong have been my feelings of dread about teaching you, my babies, anything about Quincies or reiryoku and reiatsu. Every time I saw or felt a ghost near any of you, but especially Ichigo, the thought about at least teaching control would always cross my mind._

_And always, as soon as I had that thought, there would be an intense sense of dread. Like that, even though Ichigo couldn’t readily tell the difference between the living and the dead, it could mean disaster to teach him even that._

_But with those feelings of dread is a narrow thread of hope; that if I survive tomorrow it would be safe to teach the three of you. Which is why I had Ryuu-kun promise me to teach the three of you if something happened to me, when it was ‘time’. I can’t begin to tell you when that ‘time’ is, only that, for Isshin to have brought out this box, that ‘time’ has been reached. My only guess is that something has occurred to either restore Isshin’s power, or made keeping quiet about this part of our lives—of ghosts and Hollows and Soul Society—no longer an option._

_Before I close this, there is one last thing I need to pass on: The Kaiser Gesang, the Song of the Sealed King._

** _Over nine hundred years, he shall recover his heartbeat._ **   
** _ Over ninety years, he shall recover his intellect._ **   
** _ Over nine years, he shall recover his power…_ **   
** _ …and over nine days, he shall recover the world._ **

_The last line was something my mother only told me of the day before she died. What any of the lines means, I don’t know for sure._

_I just know that the thought of the return of the Quincy King fills me with just as much dread as the day of June seventeenth._

_I pray none of my worries will come to pass, and that you are only reading this because I forgot about it, and I am standing with you. But if that slim hope does not come—_

_Isshin: You’re doing a better job than you think you are. As long as they know you try, and that you love them, it will work out in the end._

_Ichigo: Never blame yourself if you can’t protect everyone. Sometimes, no matter what you wish, or how hard you try, some people will always spurn your (or anyone’s) protection, and you cannot save someone who does not want to be saved. In the same vein, you are just as worthy of protection as everyone else. Even protectors have times when they find themselves in need of protection, so never cast that aside. If you are not willing to protect yourself, then there is no point in protecting others except by sacrificing yourself. And not only do you sacrifice yourself, you sacrifice all future protection._

_Karin: Go easy on your father. He acts from the heart, no matter how embarrassing he acts or how outrageous. And it’s okay to admit you’re lonely._

_Yuzu: Do not let Isshin get out of cooking at least some of the time. He’s a better cook then he pretends to be. Also, don’t be afraid to take a break and make/let one of the others do the tasks you’ve taken upon yourself._

_No matter what happens to me, just remember that I love all of you, and that no matter what path your lives take without me, I will always be proud of you._

_All my love,_   
_ Kurosaki (Shiba) Masaki_

* * *

Rukia and Kon quietly left the room as Karin, biting the inside of her mouth, hugged Isshin (who was silently crying) properly, Yuzu and Ichigo following close behind.

If Rukia happened to not notice how she was hugging Kon tight to her, well…

…he had enough self-preservation to keep his mouth shut.

* * *

“Something’s different about Kurosaki-kun…” Inoue noted. “First he missed two days in a row, and now it seems like his furrowed brow is less…furrow-y.”

“He was at the river bank yesterday.” Arisawa commented. “But I was able to get him to go with me to the arcade for the first time in ages.” She turned to Rukia, who was eating lunch with them today. “Ne Kuchiki, you know anything? You’re boarding at his house, right?”

“Hmm…” Rukia stalled for time, wondering what to say. “Maybe…he’s starting to forgive himself?” She proposed, suspecting that to be the real reason anyway.

Or she was projecting her own lightened burden onto him. She didn’t know for sure.

Inoue and Arisawa exchanged a look and left things at that, turning the subject to Inoue’s hunt for a new apartment.

* * *

_It’s just Masaki’s children. You can do this Ryuuken._

He repeated this like a mantra in his head as he entered Urahara’s shop. The brat and the girl he had made (as in literally, because the normal way of having kids was too mundane for him) weren’t in sight, and neither was Tsukabishi.

The tatami that usually covered the trapdoor down to the training lair was to the side, and the door itself was open. That in itself wasn’t unusual; they tended to do that if all of them were down there for some reason but…

Ryuuken had only gone a few rungs down the ladder when he realized that there was a good five feet of water covering the floor of the training lair. And it didn’t appear to be receding, so there was enough water to fill the whole lair, whose dimensions, which Urahara never confirmed, Ryuuken had estimated to be ‘huge’.

“This is one of your kids’ fault, Kurosaki.” He said to himself, not sure himself which Kurosaki he meant.

With a sigh, he focused in on where Urahara and Kurosaki’s presences were, and with a slightly pained look, used Hirenkyaku.

As much as he hated using Quincy techniques, he hated swimming even more. At least Urahara had the decency to shield the whole place.

* * *

“Okay.” Urahara declared. “I see your point about starting large and working down with Kurosaki-kun.” He would have loved to whip his fan out, but it had been an unfortunate casualty of what had just happened.

Tessai had finally, after consulting with Hachi and after Yoruichi had broken into the Kido Corp archive to double check, uncovered an appropriate kido for Ichigo to try that would demonstrate Isshin’s point about starting off big and working down to finer control with Ichigo.

And wouldn’t potentially kill all of them.

It was one of a group of unclassed, unnumbered kido, truthfully only a step up from basic reiryoku manipulation. But its selling points were that it didn’t require precise control, was very tolerate of reiryoku fluctuations, and wouldn’t kill all of them if it went awry.

At least, all of them had been confident on that last point initially; only Nejibana could have generated enough water with enough force to be actually dangerous.

But, as they forgot, this was Ichigo.

After running Ichigo through the motions ‘dry’ (aka without power), everyone had ascended assorted rocks, since they had no doubt that there would be enough water in the immediate area to require the action anyway. The adults were on one rock, the girls on another, while Karin had glared Jinta onto a third rock.

And then…Ichigo cast it.

When, instead of a moderately-sized whirlpool of water forming at roughly chest-length, there was a whirlpool closer in size to an Olympic swimming pool above his head that exploded out, they realized that they forgot to account for the Kurosaki Effect (trademark pending).

Isshin grabbed the twins, Tessai grabbed Ururu, and Urahara grabbed Jinta, flashing up to the top of the largest rock in the vicinity. Rukia latched onto Ichigo, pretty much sitting on his shoulders, to his displeasure.

The scene Ryuuken turned up to was this: a group of soaked adults and children, with Ichigo and Rukia in the water. “…do I want to know any details?” He finally asked, watching Ichigo and Rukia pretty much wrestling in the water, as she tried to stay on him while he tried to push her off.

“Ichigo’s control kinda sucks. A lot.” Isshin said, a bit obviously.

“How are we going to get all this water out of here?” Karin wondered, crouching down to look at the water’s surface.

Suddenly she jumped back. “That was only supposed to create water, right?” She asked, pointing at what had startled her.

“OH! Kurosaki-kun found Mako-chan!” Urahara exclaimed, as Ichigo and Rukia both froze at the sight of a fin poking out of the water.

Grabbing onto Rukia (he HAD seen Jaws, after all), Ichigo frantically tried to remember that high speed movement Ossan and White-him would do on occasion, and that he never managed on purpose. With a static-y sound, he appeared on a nearby large rock, flailing momentarily as he regained his balance. “The HELL Hat’n’Clogs?!?!” He cried. “Why the fuck is there a shark in here?”

“Experiment! But I forgot where I put her, so thank you for finding her!” Urahara replied.

“That still didn’t really answer the question of ‘why’.” Rukia complained as Tessai started a kido she didn’t recognize.

“I’m pretty sure we REALLY don’t want to know ‘why’. Especially if it’s been lurking in the recovery hot spring.” Ichigo reminded her.

* * *

It took five large, written, kido seals to remove all the water. Well, enough water for the ground to be merely muddy. Tessai quickly left to empty the seals into the river as Isshin made introductions. “This is Ishida Ryuuken, Masaki’s cousin. I’ve bragged enough for you to know all their names, right?” He asked Ryuuken.

“Unfortunately.” Ryuuken said, surveying the damp Kurosaki children.

“Thank you for taking the time to teach us.” Yuzu said (honestly), Karin and Ichigo dutifully repeating her words.

“I’ll be teaching once I see how you are with traditional archery.” He corrected. “So let me check your form and accuracy, then we’ll see if any of the focuses I’ve brought respond. Unless you have the ones from Masaki’s family?”

“Mom left a letter in her family’s box, that she wrote the day before she…” Ichigo said, a little hunched over but nowhere near as much as he used to (according to Isshin’s drunk rants). “After we read it, we didn’t feel like looking at the rest of the box last night.”

“We can check for any charms and if they respond to you later, but for now, whichever one responds the best should suffice for practice.” Ryuuken proposed.

“Charm?” Yuzu asked, tilting her head. “You need a charm to focus it?”

Ryuuken nodded as Yuzu, to his complete and utter non-surprise, summoned up a small bow in her hand. _Only your child Masaki…_ “The focus makes it significantly easier to summon a bow.” He told her, the bow fading away as Yuzu cut off power.

Yuzu and Karin had a few errors in their form, and did the required seven out of ten strikes to the target. Ichigo’s form was practically textbook perfect, and fired ten out of ten. “One of my zanpakutou spirits embodies the Quincy power I inherited from Mom, and both he and the other one are slave drivers.” Ichigo explained.

“What do you mean?” Isshin asked.

“Uh…every night when I go to bed, I go to my Inner World, and they split the night between them teaching me stuff?” Ichigo said tentatively. “Ossan, the Quincy one, does archery and working on the auto trigger for Blut Vene, while White-me, the Shinigami/Hollow one, does practical sword work in terms of trying to kill me and vice versa. It turns out he remembers some kido from before, so he’s going to teach me one for each time I draw blood.” _Why do I get the feeling it soon might be easier to make up business cards explaining everything?_

** _Because everyone’ll have the same type of questions, and it’s that or let me kick some asses._ **

**Violence is not a universal solution.**

** _Oh you so don’t get to pull that high and mighty shit when your temper is as bad as ours!_ **

With a mental sigh, Ichigo refocused his attention on outside as he heard sounds of a fight. “Needless to say, cooperation is a work in progress.”

“I didn’t think Shinigami were so open with their zanpakutou.” Ryuuken commented, glancing at Rukia.

“Given how weird my soul is, we’ve got no clue what works until I try it, so if being open gets me some suggestions…” Ichigo shrugged. “Considering the number of Shinigami I’ve met can be counted on one hand, I have no idea what is and isn’t normal.”

“Trust me, if normal was Seireitei, you’re somewhere past the Zaraki District.” Rukia said flatly. “Which is the Eightieth District, North Rukongai.”

“Isn’t that like one of the worst Districts?” Karin questioned. “Cuz Ichi-nii would just beat up everyone who says he’s not normal.”

“Except Zaraki-taichou is from there, and he is decidedly not normal.” Isshin pointed out.

“If we could perhaps move on…” Ryuuken cut in, glasses flashing. “Did you know, that when your mother told him she was pregnant with Ichigo, he fainted and landed face down in his soup?” He directed at the Kurosaki children (and Rukia, who was grouped with them).

Karin and Ichigo grinned evilly. “It’s not like I knew gigai were fertile! Kisuke didn’t have a user’s manual!” Isshin protested, glaring at Ryuuken.

“Leave me out of this.” Urahara said mildly, carefully unfolding his fan rib by rib.

* * *

After about two hours, Yuzu and Karin had both summoned bows using focuses.

Ichigo…was still trying. With how explosive nearly everything reiryoku-related that he performed, Ichigo was at some distance from the others.

“I think you’re trying too hard.” Rukia piped up, looking up from the book on Romanji calligraphy she had found.

“’Trying too hard’?” Ichigo repeated, dubious.

“You work on instinct, Ichigo. Formal instruction only takes you so far. You conjured reiraku to find Shibata on instinct; you had a goal, so you just did. This is probably the same thing.” Rukia shrugged. “You said one of your zanpakutou spirits represents the Quincy inheritance, right? So try using the sword that spirit is associated with.”

There was a sense of approval from Ossan._ And you didn’t say anything because…_

**You didn’t ask.**

Rolling his eyes, Ichigo handed the focus that had responded the most to him to Rukia.

Frowning, his left hand went to his waist, where the smaller blade was in his Shinigami form. Remembering what she had said about instinct, he wrapped his hand around the hilt, fully expecting the blade to be there.

And it was. Considering the blade, he noticed the charm hanging off the tassel. A manji, pure black edged with bright blue.

It was also the shape of the cross the Kurosaki Quincy used.

Pointing the blade at the target, Ichigo closed his eyes, breathing in and out, picturing a bow forming around the blade. The image in his mind, Ichigo pulled the drawstring coming from the hilt back. Holding it at maximum draw for a heartbeat, he released it.

* * *

Rukia wasn’t surprised when Ichigo manifested the smaller blade of the zanpakutou pair while still in his body, or at the black-edged-in-blue spirit bow that flared to life around it.

Remembering how the reiryoku ball exercise went, she slid down the back of the rock, hunkering down and shielding her head.

* * *

Ryuuken was the only one to jump at the distant sound of an explosion. “What was that?!” He asked, vaguely alarmed, both at the sound and their nonchalance.

“Probably Ichigo. When he conjured a ball of reiryoku it exploded when he threw it at a rock. So he likely created an exploding arrow. At least he didn’t go flying through the air this time.” Isshin replied, jogging over to check on Ichigo.

Through the smoke, he saw the bow in Ichigo’s hand. Formed around the smaller zanpakutou blade, it was black edged with blue. “That seemed more like one of the energy blasts I’ve been throwing from both swords…” Ichigo noted to himself as Rukia came out from behind her rock, brushing dust and rock fragments off of her.

“I vote that before we do anything else new, we try to pin down why everything you try is explosive.” Rukia stated, looking at the now-vanished target.

“Seconded.” Isshin agreed.

Ichigo sighed again. “That’s probably for the best…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In-story reason: since his power is in three different types, he needs to determine the best ratios to use for different things, since it's mostly the negative reaction between Hollow and Quincy behind the booms (which they'll realize soon). 
> 
> Meta reason: it's funnier
> 
> Anyone know of a time-travel fix-it where Rukia is the time-traveller? Because at this rate my only choice is to write my own, and I've got enough partial stories on my plate...


	13. Chapter 13

“You want to know why your reiryoku explodes on contact with something?” Urahara questioned. “Why? Several of the Shiba would have killed for that.”

“And two did kill themselves trying to.” Isshin added. “But none of them were hybrids.”

“I’d REALLY like to be sure I’m not suddenly going to explode or something.” Ichigo said. “I have no clue if it works the same way as with physical animal hybrids, but even if you did have another hybrid stashed somewhere, I’m sure we wouldn’t have the same traits and problems.”

“Fine.” Acting put out, Urahara led Ichigo to…something. The only recognizable thing was the computer screen. “If you could place your hand here…”

Jumping as his hand was clamped down, Ichigo watched a graph with four columns appear on the screen. The first, colored icy blue, was labeled ‘Rukia’, and was hardly even five percent. The other three, labeled ‘Shinigami’ (red), ‘Hollow’ (black), and ‘Quincy’ (blue) were roughly equal, but were also not static, fluctuating up and down as he watched.  
He got the sense of White-him and Ossan ‘peering’ over his shoulders. “Hmm…” Urahara said, sounding distracted. “Try forming an arrow?”

Remembering how the energy felt when he summoned up the bow, Ichigo could feel the energy be sucked into the weird device. On the screen, the ‘Quincy’ column shot up to ninety percent, with ‘Hollow’ a mere four percent, and ‘Shinigami’ an even smaller one percent. “Huh.” Urahara said.

“Good? Bad? Weird?” Rukia asked, watching the column with her name go down a tiny fraction of a percent.

“Weird goes without saying.” Ichigo reminded her.

“Now do as you did during the reiryoku ball exercise.” Urahara ordered.

Figuring it would be best to repeat all the steps, Ichigo did, and the ‘Shinigami’ and ‘Hollow’ went up, to nearly forty five percent each, and the ‘Quincy’ taking up the remainder between that and Rukia’s. “I believe,” Urahara started. “That the explosive effect happens when your Shinigami power is destabilized from its buffer role between Hollow and Quincy. Those are mutually destructive to each other in this context, rather like the hypothetical reaction of matter and anti-matter.”

“If that was supposed to make me feel better, it really didn’t.” Ichigo said bluntly as the device let go of his hand. “So what does that mean for me?”

“I’m not sure if it’s possible for you to emit only one type of power at a time.” Urahara admitted. “My best guess is that you might have trouble with specific kinds of abilities, like a hollow’s cero.”

“’Cero?’” Ichigo asked.

“Basically a beam of energy, typically fired from the mouth. The Hollows that usually appear in Karakura don’t usually use it. It’s more common among higher level Hollows.” Urahara explained. “I would say don’t worry about those, but knowing you, you’ll encounter them sooner rather than later.”

* * *

_**“Kido theory. How the fuck do I know kido theory?”** White-Ichigo complained, sitting down and dangling his legs off the edge of the building._

_“That would fall under knowledge, right? There’s nothing specifically good or bad about it, so it’s neutral ground. Since you know…” Ichigo trailed off as he joined his white doppelganger._

_Ichigo had asked a random, pretty basic, question about kido, and White-Ichigo had promptly given him a lecture on kido theory that shocked both of them._

_“**So I remember boring shit and negative shit. Joy.”** He deadpanned, leaning back to cross his arms under his head as he laid down._

_“…could you…tell me some stories…about Mom?” Looking out of the corner of his eye, White-Ichigo watched Ichigo fidget._

_He knew better than anyone, save for Ossan, the tangle of grief, rage, hatred, and self-loathing that was entwined around Ichigo’s memories of Masaki, even the good ones. _

_Him asking was a step in the right direction. For what, he couldn’t guess. **“Well, she was just as crazy as Goat Face, but worse, since she could hide it better until the right moment to break minds. That memorial poster was technically HER idea.”**_

_“No…” Ichigo gasped, horrified._

_“**Yes…”** White-Ichigo mocked back. “**I have no clue how the conversation got there, but she had been talking about how she didn’t want the traditional memorial shrine…”**_

_Ossan couldn’t stop his brief smile at the sight of the pair as White-Ichigo related various stories of what Masaki had related to his previous form. When he realized that the ‘true’ zanpakutou spirit was unsealed, he hadn’t been thrilled, to say the least. It had been tolerable while sealed, but for a time immediately afterwards, it—he—had become especially annoying._

_More like a Hollow than a zanpakutou._

_But after Ichigo’s firm declaration that he wasn’t choosing one of them over the other, and White-Ichigo’s dive into his fragments of inherited memories, things…changed. _

_Perhaps it was how Ichigo had gone in search of him, willingly entering that dark corner of his soul that was the past memories of his zanpakutou. Or perhaps the change was in himself, in some softening of his attitude towards his fellow spirit._

_However it happened, his fellow spirit seemed more along the lines of what Ichigo would have been like if he actually was the delinquent so many people thought he was now._

_Either way, the pair had begun plotting out how to juggle Ichigo’s hybrid nature, debating the merits of hierro versus Blut Vene, working out how to maybe combine kido with Quincy techniques…_

_He could only hope it would be enough._

* * *

“Why are you guys watching that crap? Both of you have power now.” Ichigo complained, Isshin and Yuzu sitting on the floor watching that idiot Don Kan’onji.

“I like his style.” Isshin explained.

“So…humans watch other humans go to ‘haunted’ locations?” Rukia asked, checking that she had it right. “Why?”

“Who the hell knows—“

“Look!” Yuzu yelled, pointing at the TV, which was showing the next episode’s preview.

A special, live, show.

In Karakura.

Fuck.

Ichigo let his head hit the kitchen table, White-him cackling in his head.

Ossan, tellingly, wasn’t stopping him. Traitor.

* * *

Surprisingly, Ichigo made it through to next Wednesday without killing Keigo.

Or Isshin, who suspended their evening spars in a rare display of sense.

Urahara’s lair, however, had several new craters. The most impressive of which was created when Isshin pulled the hand gesture for the only time around Ichigo, who managed to create a Cero and fire it at him.

This was also when Isshin decided that it might be for the best if he did not give Ichigo a reason to attack him with that or his zanpakutou.

White-him found his disgust hilarious. _“**You realize how boring it is in here?!”** He yelled, gesturing around him. **“Only the sky changes, and it’s never done this before!”** ‘This’ being that greyish yellow of a thunderstorm sky, lightning sparking between the clouds._

_“You’re just waiting for Ossan to get struck.” Ichigo called him out flatly, since Ossan was still on his pole. “Doesn’t that get uncomfortable?” He asked. Ossan made it look easy, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t._

_“**I think he was a bird at some point in his existence.”** White-him noted._

_“Wait, so you two can’t change things in here?” Ichigo asked, going back to what White-him said._

**“It’s your Inner World. It’s not ours to change. I think it would only change if you yourself changed.”** _Ossan explained._

_Ichigo scowled. “That’s not fair to the two of you. If ‘use’ is the same as ‘possession’, and possession is nine tenths of the law, the two of you have every right to make changes in here. I’m not the one in here all the time.”_

_**“…I’m not sure it’s meant to be like that…”** White-him said, on the edge of ‘dumbfounded’._

_“So? Who gives a damn about how things are ‘meant’ to be. So, both of you, make this place comfortable for you.” Ichigo ordered, before he was drawn out by the sound of his morning alarm (also called his father attacking him)._

_Something in the air shifted as he made this declaration. White Ichigo and Ossan stared at each other for a long moment, before blurring into motion, darting in different directions._

* * *

“Is there really a ghost here?” Ichigo asked Rukia under his breath, after the ‘mandatory’ group photo had been taken.

Ichigo and Karin had only edged into frame to stop Isshin from becoming even more embarrassing.

“If it’s a fixed location ghost, then we’ll find out soon enough. They merge into the background ‘noise’ of whatever they’re fixated on, only appearing when ‘their’ territory is threatened.” Rukia explained.

As she finished speaking, there was what sounded like a Hollow’s scream, and the ghost of a man appeared. The Chain of Fate bound him to the ground of the hospital, and was partially pulled away. “See? If left alone, the fixation on this place will cause him to turn into a Hollow completely.” Rukia subtly pointed at the ghost, who was ranting about the hospital was his.

“Is he dangerous?” Ichigo asked as the idiot approached the ghost.

“Nope. So as long as nothing damages the hole—“ The idiot Kan’onji stuck his staff in the partially open Hollow hole.

With a sigh, Ichigo swallowed Kon, glad he’d thought to bring him in pill form. _Note to self, see if Konso can be learned by anyone, or if it has to be done with a zanpakutou. Not like this guy’s gonna stop…_

Leaping in to help the idiot (inadvertently giving viewers great footage of ‘poltergeist activity’ he hauled him inside), Ichigo hadn’t noticed how his friends had been reacting to the screams of the demi-Hollow.

* * *

“C’mon Ichigo, that lion looked just like you!” Rukia heckled as she, Ichigo, and the twins left the big cat section of the zoo. Yuzu and Karin, upon learning that Rukia had never even heard of the concept of a zoo, had immediately roped Ichigo into taking all of them.

Ichigo rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother trying to argue as Rukia spotted the petting zoo section, with a group/herd/pack of rabbits front and center. With a squeal, she disappeared into the rabbits with Yuzu.

* * *

“C’mon Rukia…” Ichigo groaned. He wanted a study buddy for exams, but his normal options were busy, and Rukia didn’t see the point in taking the exams seriously.

“You don’t need me to study for the exams Ichigo!” Rukia protested right back. “It’s not like how I score matters!”

Then Ichigo had An Idea. “Wouldn’t be a shame for the great Kuchiki name to be even vaguely connected to poor performance?” He questioned with a sly look, making her twitch. “After all, even if your performance doesn’t truly matter, surely a Kuchiki would want to give their best performance no matter how insignificant or inconsequential the task is. And you can only give your best performance by preparing beforehand…”

Quiet echoed as Ichigo turned to his kanji workbook, his eyes strangely drawn to one kanji, 斬. Zan.

“…I hate you…” Rukia ground out, grabbing her own workbook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's short, but next bit is Ichigo's birthday and then Ishida the idiot. From the timelines I've read, the Ishida stupidity happens on July 17th, and Ichigo's birthday is July 15. So by all rights there should have been a birthday chapter in the series.


End file.
